THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  ILLINOIS 

LIBRARY 

973.794 
PZ9e 

cop.  2 

ItlMfc 

ami 

IIUNOIS  HISTORICAL  SURVEY 


^7  Va^^ 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  SOUTH 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •     CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA,  Lm 

TORONTO 


JEFFERSON    DAVIS 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  SOUTH 


BY 

H.  J.  ECKENRODE 


jRrto  gortt 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1923 

All  rights  reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Copyright,  1923, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set   up  and   electrotyped.     Published   August,    1923. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 

New  York,  U    S.  A. 


97* 


TO 

ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE 


544860 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign 


http://archive.org/details/jeffersondavisprOOecke 


THE  DESIGN 

Confederate  history  has  been  very  unevenly  written. 
Lee's  campaigns  are  embodied  in  a  considerable  literature, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Civil  War  in  the  West  has 
never  received  adequate  treatment  from  the  Southern  stand- 
point and  the  workings  of  the  government  have  been 
neglected.  The  present  work  is  a  study  of  the  politico- 
military  history  of  the  Confederacy,  practically  virgin  soil. 
Professor  W.  E.  Dodd  has  given  an  admirable  account  of  the 
earlier  career  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  Armistead  Gordon  has 
written  an  excellent  brief  biography  from  secondary  sources; 
but  not  until  the  mass  of  Confederate  correspondence  in  the 
Official  Records,  together  with  memoirs  of  participants,  had 
been  examined  could  the  interplay  of  the  government  and 
the  military  leaders  be  determined.  This  has  been  done  in 
the  present  work. 

Philosophically,  Jefferson  Davis,  President  of  the  South 
is  an  effort  to  apply  anthropological  science  to  American 
history.  Madison  Grant,  in  his  great  work,  The  Passing  of 
the  Great  Race,  has  indicated  the  path;  this  volume  makes 
the  application.  There  is  no  partisanship.  The  conclusions 
are  reached  largely  without  reference  to  political  or  consti- 
tutional considerations,  but  follow  inexorably  from  the  scien- 
tific theory  which  underlies  the  book. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Call i 

II     The  Tropic  Nordics 4 

III  Jefferson  Davis 29 

IV  Mexico 40 

V    The  Triumph  of  Industrialism       ....  55 

VI    The  Great  Adventure 98 

VII    The  First  Crisis 156 

VIII    A  Season  of  Victory 181 

IX     Dilemma 194 

X    The  Great  Crisis 210 

XI     Downhill 238 

XII    The  Military  Gamble 282 

XIII  Wanted,  A  Cromwell .310 

XIV  Catastrophe 331 

XV    Why  the  Confederacy  Failed 337 

XVI     The  Moral 357 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  SOUTH 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS 


THE  CALL 

IT  is  an  early  spring  day  in  the  South  in  a  town  on  a 
beautiful  river — Montgomery,  Alabama.  A  crowd  pushes 
around  a  building  on  an  eminence,  the  state  capitol.  It  is 
a  typically  Southern  capitol,  rather  small  and  dingy  but 
with  an  imposing  front  of  tall  white  columns,  which,  seen 
from  the  river,  look  classic  and  tasteful.  The  crowd  is  of 
the  distant  past — women  in  hoop  skirts,  many  of  them 
beautiful;  men  in  black  swallow-tailed  coats,  light  trousers, 
stocks  and  broad-brimmed  hats;  negroes  in  homespun  or 
tatters.  It  is  an  excited,  voluble,  jubilant  crowd,  filled  with 
that  sense  of  historic  crisis  which  sometimes  comes  upon 
men,  lifting  them  above  the  present  and  giving  them  a  glance 
into  the  future. 

Suddenly  a  rush  of  men  and  boys,  with  a  few  women, 
pours  from  the  capitol  building. 

"The  convention  has  gone  into  secret  session,"  they  ex- 
plain to  the  waiting  crowd.  The  doors  of  the  capitol  are 
closed. 

Fifteen,  twenty  minutes  pass  while  the  excitement  of  the 
crowd  grows  in  intensity.  The  people  seem  pleasantly  ex- 
cited: they  laugh  and  jest.    The  negroes  are  quite  as  much 


2  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

interested  as  the  whites.  Indeed,  at  the  moment  there  is  a 
camaraderie  in  the  air  which  makes  it  hard  to  believe  that 
some  of  the  onlookers  are  slaves  and  others  masters. 

Presently  the  doors  open  again,  creakingly.  The  crowd 
rushes  into  the  building  and  floods  up  the  narrow  stairways 
into  the  galleries,  filling  them  to  overflowing.  Narrow,  un- 
comfortable, dirty  galleries,  but  the  people,  in  their  intense 
interest,  take  no  note  of  discomfort.  They  have  eyes  and 
ears  only  for  what  is  passing  in  the  legislative  chamber 
below.    It  is  February  9,  1861. 

The  hall  is  filled  with  delegates.  The  presiding  officer 
sits  on  his  dais,  a  grave,  bearded  man  with  a  benevolent,  in- 
telligent face.  He  is  Howell  Cobb  of  Georgia,  late  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  at  Washington,  now  a  secessionist.  Many 
of  the  men  who  sit  facing  him  are  likewise  distinguished 
looking.  Every  type  of  the  South  may  be  seen,  but  a  large 
proportion  of  the  faces  are  high-bred  and  even  noble.  They 
are  full  of  character  and  intellect.  In  contradistinction  to 
the  spectators,  they  are  grave  and  almost  apprehensive. 
It  is  evident  that  the  moment  is  one  of  unusual  importance. 

The  presiding  officer  speaks  out  clearly  and  deliberately: 
"The  next  matter  before  the  convention  is  the  election  of  a 
provisional  President  of  the  Confederate  States." 

The  vote  is  by  states — one  vote  for  each  state.  Two  tell- 
ers are  appointed — J.  L.  M.  Curry  of  Alabama  and  William 
Porcher  Miles  of  South  Carolina,  well-known  lesser  lights. 
The  tellers  rise  and  visit  one  group  of  delegates  after  an- 
other, collecting  scraps  of  paper.  A  single  piece  of  paper  is 
given  them  by  each  group:  there  are  six  ballots  in  all.  The 
tellers,  after  studying  the  papers  a  moment,  make  a  brief 
report  to  the  presiding  officer  in  low  tones. 

A  tense  silence  falls  on  the  hall  as  Howell  Cobb  rises  to 


THE  CALL  3 

his  feet  and  speaks,  slowly  and  with  a  certain  painful  em- 
phasis: "It  is  my  duty  to  announce  that  the  Honorable 
Jefferson  Davis  of  Mississippi  has  been  unanimously  elected 
provisional  President  of  the  Confederate  States  of  North 
America." 

A  first  handclap  comes  from  the  gallery,  and  then  there 
is  a  loud  burst  of  applause  from  spectators  and  delegates 
alike.  For  a  moment  the  hall  echoes  with  the  clamor.  Only 
for  a  moment.  The  next  instant  the  gavel  falls  menacingly 
on  the  speaker's  desk,  and  silence  is  restored.  The  body 
proceeds  to  the  succeeding  business.  In  such  fashion  is  a 
new  ruler  given  to  the  world. 


II 

THE  TROPIC  NORDICS 

THE  South  thus  severed  the  marital  tie  with  the  North. 
The  separation  was  called  honorable  divorce  by  the 
South,  criminal  desertion  by  the  North.  In  the  end  the 
South  was  forced  back  in  the  bonds  of  holy  wedlock,  though 
with  certain  mental  reservations  that  obtained  until  lately. 
It  did  become  bone  of  one  bone  and  flesh  of  one  flesh  with 
the  North  in  the  end,  being  incorporated  and  assimilated. 
The  military  victory  of  the  North  was  at  length  completed 
by  the  more  enduring  victory  of  ideas.  The  individualist, 
non-industrialist,  unmodern  South  has  come  to  think  and 
feel  as  the  group-member,  industrialist,  ultra-modern  North. 
This  is  the  real  Union  brought  about  by  the  shock  of  the 
great  schism,  the  Union  looked  forward  to  by  the  storm- 
stressed,  battered  Union  of  those  days,  which  bore  on  its 
banner  through  the  strife  the  lost  stars,  the  wandering  stars, 
as  well  as  the  fixed  Northern  stars. 

Wells  has  awakened  the  world  to  a  sense  of  the  reality  of 
history:  before  our  literary  Columbus  history  was  a  tapestry 
of  kings  and  queens,  a  gallery  of  armor,  a  rack  of  law  books, 
a  set  of  Meissonier  engravings,  a  file  of  old  newspapers.  It 
was  not  that  which  the  world  used  to  think  of  its  deity  as 
being — anthropological.  Our  new  history  is  anatomical, 
physiological,  chemical,  bacteriological,  pathological,  sexual: 
it  has  to  do  with  lust,  hate,  malice,  vice,  virtue,  disease,  vigor, 

4 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  5 

guile,  simplicity,  ambition,  indifference,  thrift,  waste,  valor, 
cowardice,  divine,  devilish.  History  is  only  individual  man 
multiplied  a  million  times.    Wells  has  shown  us  that. 

So  much  for  Columbus.  What  Vespucci  will  now  bring 
life  into  the  dry  bones  of  American  history?  What  penman 
will  cease  rattling  the  dead  arguments  of  states'  rights  and 
nationalism,  slavery  and  abolition,  and  show  us  planter  and 
manufacturer,  slave-owner  and  abolitionist  "in  their  habit, 
as  they  lived"?  Which  of  our  historians  will  give  up  plead- 
ing for  picturing? 

We  are  the  slaves  of  phrases.  More  than  that,  we  are  the 
helots  of  moral  ideas,  before  which  we  bow  down  and  burn 
incense.  Perhaps  we  do  not  care  to  know  that  we  are  wor- 
shiping images,  not  realities.  But  we  are.  Let  us  get  away 
from  it.  Let  us  give  up  the  old,  old  business  of  twisting 
what  has  happened  in  the  past  into  the  proof  of  some  pet 
theory,  the  justification  of  some  maxim.  Let  us  face  things 
as  they  are,  as  if  we  were  putting  chemicals  into  test  tubes 
for  reactions.  Let  us  accept  the  precipitate  formed  by  pour- 
ing the  passion  of  one  side  in  a  contest  upon  the  passion 
of  the  other  side,  mingling  the  virtues  and  defects  of  war- 
ring parties  as  if  we  were  dropping  acid  on  metal.  What 
difference  does  it  make  to  us,  grandsons  and  great-grandsons, 
whether  North  or  South  was  right  or  wrong  in  the  great  con- 
troversy, or  half  right  and  half  wrong?  But  it  does  matter 
that  we  shall  know  the  truth,  that  we  shall  recognize  the 
precipitate  formed  in  the  test  tube  of  history  for  what  it  is. 

There  are  two  outstanding  figures  in  American  history — 
planter  and  business  man.  Before  these  colossi  all  our 
individual  supermen  dwindle  into  comparative  insignificance. 
Our  history  is,  in  a  small  sense,  the  work  of  a  number  of 
men  we  can  name;  but,  in  its  large  sense,  it  is  the  creation 


6  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

of  many  thousands  of  unknown  persons  who,  indistinguish- 
able cells,  built  up  the  coral  frame  of  our  civilization.  The 
planter  type  claims  Washington,  Jefferson,  Madison,  Mon- 
roe, Marshall,  Calhoun,  Clay,  Polk,  Lee — and  Jefferson 
Davis.  Of  the  business  type  are  Hamilton,  Webster,  Sew- 
ard, Lincoln,  Grant,  Gould,  Pierpont  Morgan,  Rockefeller, 
Edison,  Roosevelt,  Root.  From  the  beginning  until  1865, 
the  giants  clashed :  then  business  triumphed  over  agriculture, 
and  the  planter  passed  into  history.  This  is  the  truth  of  it, 
though  men  make  of  our  history  a  fight  of  St.  George  and 
the  dragon,  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  light  and  darkness.  Such 
moralizing  is  child's  play.  Like  Nietzsche,  we  should  go  be- 
yond good  and  evil  and  study  the  causes  of  history,  which 
usually  may  no  more  bear  moral  labels  than  may  germ  cul- 
tures and  entomological  specimens. 

Republic — who  made  it?  A  mob  of  valiant  farmers  turned 
soldier?  A  crowd  of  lawyers  in  a  parliament?  Two  or  three 
immortals?  No;  the  republic  was  the  work  of  the  planters, 
of  proud  men  who  ruled  on  their  own  estates  and  disliked 
the  thought  of  kings  and  nobles  over  them,  of  book-loving 
agriculturists  struck  with  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 
Hamilton  would  have  had  a  kingdom.  The  planters  would 
not:  they  were  for  a  republic,  a  Senate,  two  consuls — we 
called  them  President  and  Vice — and  all  the  other  trappings 
of  the  antique  state  to  save  which  Brutus  and  Cassius  died. 
Indeed,  Patrick  Henry  cried,  "Caesar  had  his  Brutus  .  .  . 
and  George  the  Third  may  profit  by  the  example. "  The 
American  republic  was  the  precipitate  formed  by  classical 
antiquity  working  on  Southern  imagination. 

But  the  planters  were  too  experienced  and  practical  to 
seek  to  revive  the  conditions  of  antiquity:  they  were  Crom- 
wells,  not  Rienzis.    They  grafted  on  the  representative  in- 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  7 

stitutions  of  England  the  idea  of  the  Roman  republic.  But 
they  did  something  more:  they  invested  the  antique  republic 
with  the  spirit  of  eighteenth  century  liberalism;  they  made 
the  republic  the  antithesis  of  the  European  state  and  the 
European  spirit.  They  created  the  democratic  republic. 
They  reenforced  it  with  the  Calvinism  of  the  North,  thus 
combining  the  three  mightiest  forces  the  world  has  known — 
Roman  republicanism,  English  representation  and  the  most 
militant  form  of  Christianity. 

The  planters  were  the  super  type  of  early  America. 
Sprung  from  an  energetic  English  strain,  relieved  by  slavery 
from  toil  but  not  from  occupation,  stimulated  by  a  large 
freedom  from  European  control  and  by  somewhat  exotic 
surroundings,  the  planters  were  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the 
liberal  political  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Being 
practical  men,  they  were  able  to  realize  their  philosophy. 
Liberals  and  yet  not  doctrinaires,  theorists  and  realists  in 
one,  they  were  well  fitted  to  bring  into  being  the  democratic 
republic.  They  initiated  the  convention  of  1787,  largely 
framed  the  Constitution  and  put  the  planter-general,  Wash- 
ington, in  the  presidential  chair.  The  American  experiment 
began  to  take  form  and  substance. 

But  the  republic  was  still  in  leading  strings  to  Europe. 
The  merchants  and  large  landowners  of  the  North,  who 
were  English  in  feeling  and,  therefore,  not  democratic, 
looked  back  toward  the  motherland.  But  the  planters  looked 
forward  toward  the  unknown  future.  It  was  then  that  they 
performed  their  greatest  feat,  completing  in  the  period  be- 
tween 1794  and  181 5  the  cleavage  from  Europe.  They — 
or  their  leader,  Jefferson — decided  that  the  American  re- 
public was  to  go  its  own  way  in  the  world. 

Through  the  efforts  of  the  planters,  and  the  Northern  and 


8  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Western  farmers  who  followed  them,  American  democracy 
became  established.  It  was  not  accomplished  without  leav- 
ing scars  and  without  a  certain  deterioration  in  the  planters 
themselves.  The  Tories  of  the  Revolution  had  been  dis- 
possessed and  their  lands  had  fallen  to  patriotic  small  farm- 
ers, who  rose  from  obscurity  to  be  planters  themselves.  The 
Federalist  planters  lost  power  and  in  the  South  the  Jeffer- 
sonian  planters  ruled — enthusiastic  democrats  who  preached 
equality  and,  by  way  of  practicing  it,  liberated  their  slaves 
at  death.  In  1794,  Virginia  was  almost  as  Jacobin  as 
France,  though,  fortunately,  the  Jacobins  were  Anglo-Saxons 
and  masters,  not  Latins  and  liberated  peasants. 

American  democracy  was  something  new  because  it  was  a 
social  philosophy  and  a  practical  system  in  one,  and  it  had 
such  exemplars  as  Jefferson  and  George  Mason,  that  beauti- 
ful and  harmonious  soul.  It  was  the  tie  that  bound  together 
the  various  parts  of  the  republic,  turning  an  ill-assorted  con- 
federacy into  a  country  with  a  common  consciousness.  Be- 
fore Marshall's  decisions  and  the  rise  of  nationalism,  Ameri- 
cans found  in  Jeffersonian  democracy  the  bond  of  union. 
New  Englanders,  Pennsylvanians,  Carolinians,  Ohioans,  were 
Americans  less  because  they  were  citizens  of  the  United 
States  than  because  they  were  fellow  members  of  the  Demo- 
cratic-Republican party.  The  charm  of  the  later  South,  the 
ancien  regime  of  romance,  has  led  us  somewhat  to  forget 
that  the  planters  were  the  first  successful  practitioners  of  de- 
mocracy, the  first  practical  upholders  of  the  rights  of  man. 

Jeffersonian  democracy  became  the  keynote  of  the  re- 
public: Dickens  has  satirized  it  immortally  in  Martin  Chuz- 
zlewit:  "the  Palladium  of  rational  Liberty  at  home,  and 
the  dread  of  Foreign  oppression  abroad."  Nothing  is  more 
certain,  however,  than  that  the  natural  man  is  not  a  demo- 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  9 

crat.  Only  by  special  grace  is  man  a  democrat  at  all. 
American  democracy  was  the  product  of  an  exalted  mood. 
It  was  the  flood  tide  of  the  great  revolt  against  the  Middle 
Ages  and  against  medieval  faiths — religious,  political,  social. 
The  American  Revolution  has  never  been  adequately  studied 
on  its  social  side.  Socially,  it  was  a  surge  upward  of  small 
farmers  seeking  to  become  planters,  of  dissenters  clamoring 
to  despoil  churchmen,  of  demagogues  ambitious  to  be  rulers. 
The  planters — or  a  large  part  of  them — joined  in  the  attack 
on  the  settled  order  of  the  world.  They  did  so  largely  be- 
cause of  their  hatred  of  England,  but  also  partly  because 
they  were  genuine  converts  to  the  gospel  of  Rousseau.  They 
gave  democracy  its  political  success.  Contrary  to  proph- 
ecies, the  country  did  not  tumble  down  about  President 
Jefferson's  head.  Government  had  become  the  concern  of 
the  common  man,  and,  thanks  to  the  planters,  it  was  a  good 
working  system.  The  planters  ruled  in  a  democracy  by 
force  of  merit. 

But  democracy,  politically  triumphant,  was  not  the  moral 
re-creation  it  had  been  claimed  to  be.  Democrats  did  not 
differ  from  those  they  had  dispossessed.  Human  nature  was 
not  a  whit  less  corrupt  than  before  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  The  brotherhood  of  man  was  still  far  dis- 
tant. Laborers  still  worked  twelve  hours  a  day  for  the 
privilege  of  a  Sunday  of  glorious  intoxication;  children  died 
like  flies  in  the  factories  that  were  springing  up;  slaves 
still  sullened  under  the  lash. 

Furthermore,  the  rank  and  file  of  democrats  were  not 
true  to  democracy,  even  if  the  high  priests  were.  The 
farmers  who  cursed  monarchy  in  1776  and  derided  Chris- 
tianity in  1793  were  comfortable  planters  in  1800.  They 
had  acres  and  slaves  and  they  wanted  aristocracy.     In 


10  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

other  words,  nature  was  asserting  itself.  Rousseau  had  pre- 
vailed over  a  natural  Nietzschean  order,  but  not  for  long. 
The  Nordic  instinct  of  mastery  was  arising  out  of  democ- 
racy itself. 

Besides,  all  the  forces  of  the  external  world  were  rally- 
ing against  democracy.  Europe,  half  mad  with  egalitarian- 
ism  in  1794,  had  swung  far  back  the  other  way  a  decade 
later.  The  rights  of  man  perished  in  181 5,  in  the  smoke 
of  Waterloo.  Europe  was  caught  in  the  full  tide  of  the 
reaction  from  the  French  Revolution,  and  the  " Altar  and 
the  Throne"  replaced  Rousseau.  In  the  United  States,  the 
North  did  not  feel  this  reaction,  because  of  the  economic 
revolution  that  was  displacing  merchant  and  landowner 
in  favor  of  manufacturer,  but  the  South  came  under  its 
full  spell.  Jacobinism,  atheism,  egalitarianism  withered  like 
Jonah's  gourd.    From  1794  to  1820  was  a  far  cry  indeed. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  was  the  interpreter  of  this  change  to  the 
South.  Medievalism,  now  that  it  was  dead,  had  become  a 
beautiful  sentiment,  since  it  was  no  longer  an  ugly  fact. 
Romance  was  born  out  of  the  sordid  horror  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  South  became  permeated  with  Scott.  It  read 
Scott;  it  talked  Scott — so  the  phrase,  "Southern  chivalry" — 
it  played  at  the  tournament  of  Ashby  de  la  Zouch.  It  ceased 
to  be  the  Cromwellian  South  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
Robespierrian  South  of  the  seventeen-nineties  and  came 
to  be  the  Arthurian  South  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century. 
Not  that  democracy  in  the  South  was  dead;  by  no  means.  It 
lived  on  and  it  resisted  stoutly;  but  the  fact  remains  that 
the  body  of  the  planters  revived  aristocracy  despite  the 
new  industrial  democracy  that  was  rising  in  the  North 
and  the  new  liberalism  which  finally  flowered  in  Europe. 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  11 

The  planters  who  were  democrats  in  the  nineties  were  hunt- 
ing up  their  coats  of  arms  fifteen  years  later. 

The  Scottian  influence  gave  the  South  its  peculiar  charm, 
because  it  gave  the  South  romance.  It  colored  the  life  of 
the  country.  Without  Scott  there  would  have  been  slaves 
and  slaveholders  and  broad,  snowy  cotton  fields,  but  with- 
out Scott  the  South  would  have  continued  to  be  prosaic 
and  commonplace,  as  it  had  been  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  elements  of  romance  were  in  the  plantation  life,  but 
inspiration  lacked  until  Scott  wrote.  He  it  was  who,  by 
acting  on  the  imagination  of  the  South,  made  it  a  dream 
island  in  the  sea  of  modernity.  He  made  it  Walter-Scott- 
land — a  fairyland  where  young  men  saw  themselves  knights 
going  to  a  tournament  and  girls  were  Queens  of  Love 
and  Beauty  rewarding  them.  Because  the  South  was  re- 
mote, rural,  leisured,  exotic,  also  Nordic,  it  became,  by  the 
grace  of  Scott,  such  a  country  as  existed  nowhere  else  in 
the  world  or  had  ever  existed.  African  jungle  in  part; 
medieval  Europe  in  part;  American  democracy  in  part — it 
was  the  strangest  imaginable  compound  of  ages  and  ideas 
and  continents,  and  for  that  reason  fascinating. 

Partly  for  the  very  reason  that  the  South  was  beautiful 
and  singular  it  was  in  danger.  The  law  of  the  pack  holds 
for  nations  as  well  as  individuals:  it  is  perilous  to  be  dif- 
ferent. The  world  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century  was  pre- 
dominantly industrial  and  materialistic;  and  because  in- 
dustrialism was  new  it  was  very  strong.  In  the  eyes  of 
the  world  of  that  day,  with  its  factories  and  banks  and 
public  schools,  its  dull  respectability,  its  new  humanitarian- 
ism,  its  unreal  rationalism,  the  South,  with  its  cotton  fields 
and  slaves  and  patriarchs,  was  monstrous.    A  world  made 


12  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

un-Nordic  by  democracy  and  industry  looked  with  hatred 
on  the  still  Nordic  South. 

The  South,  strange  land  of  Anglo-Saxon  conquerors  and 
negro  slaves,  had  drifted  out  of  the  nineteenth  century  into 
another  epoch  all  its  own.  Because  of  this  it  was  over- 
come and  absorbed  by  the  North.  The  tragedy  of  the 
world  is  that  commonplaceness  is  always  defeating  imagina- 
tion: so  Sparta  prevailed  over  Athens,  Rome  over  Carthage, 
the  North  over  the  South.  It  was  the  outdoor  romanticism 
of  the  South  and  the  practicality  of  the  North  which,  pri- 
marily, brought  about  the  antagonism  that  ended  in  secession 
and  war. 

The  world  does  not  understand  the  ante-bellum  South. 
The  South  was,  in  reality,  quite  as  new  as  it  was  old:  it 
represented  a  certain  spiritual  change  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  That  race  is  predominantly  and  characteristically 
northern:  thus,  in  India  and  Egypt,  the  Anglo-Saxon  ever 
remains  a  stranger.  This  is  because  the  Englishman  has 
England  to  look  back  to.  But  the  Anglo-Saxon  in  the  South 
had  no  other  country  to  look  back  to  from  his  subtropical 
environment:  he  was  a  law  unto  himself.  Consequently, 
in  the  South  the  Anglo-Saxon  was  feeling  the  pull  of  the 
tropics;  he  was  beginning  to  be  tropical  while  remaining, 
in  large  part,  Nordic. 

America  was  mainly  settled,  in  the  colonial  period,  by 
Nordics.  The  Nordic  race,  which  once  inhabited  all  of 
northern  and  western  Europe,  is  now  most  numerous  in 
the  British  Isles.  The  distinguishing  marks  of  the  Nordic 
race  are  predominance  in  war  and  political  capacity,  to- 
gether with  the  love  of  adventure.  It  took  adventurous 
men  to  cross  the  sea  in  the  seventeenth  century  and  carve 
out  homes  in  the  forest.     For  more  than  a  century  the 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  13 

Nordic  settlers  of  the  various  colonies  retained  most  of 
the  racial  traits  in  common.  In  the  Revolutionary  period, 
the  South  consisted  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  North  and  South 
Carolina.  All  of  these  colonies,  with  the  exception  of  South 
Carolina,  were  really  northern,  not  southern.  But  when 
the  South  expanded  into  Georgia  and  Florida  and  Mississippi 
and  Alabama  and  Louisiana  and  Texas,  it  became  really 
southern,  subtropical.  The  Southerners  of  the  border 
states  were  halfway  abolitionists  from  1790  to  1830;  they 
would  have  abolished  slavery  but  for  the  insuperable  prac- 
tical obstacle  of  having  a  half  Anglo-Saxon,  half  African 
population  with  equal  rights.  They  never  grasped  the  mod- 
ern solution  of  emasculating  democracy,  by  means  of  which 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment  has  been  nullified — a  solution 
which,  despite  its  hardships,  has  probably  been  best  both 
for  whites  and  blacks. 

The  border  states  were  never  easy  in  their  minds  about 
slavery.  They  protested  too  much ;  they  treated  their  slaves 
so  well  that  many  of  the  latter  regretted  slavery  after  emanci- 
pation ;  they  seldom  plied  the  lash ;  they  almost  never  killed 
them.  It  was  different  in  the  tropical  South.  There  the 
Anglo-Saxon  was  a  Nordic  towering  over  inferiors.  He 
worked  his  chattels;  beat  them;  sometimes,  though  not 
often,  killed  them.  He  did  not,  like  the  border  Southerner, 
who  was  part  Northerner,  almost  believe  in  his  heart  that 
slavery  was  wrong.  No;  slavery  was  right  enough  to  the 
Nordics  in  the  tropics — in  the  rice  swamps,  the  cotton 
fields,  the  canebrakes.  Slavery  was  so  right  to  them  that 
sometimes  they  demanded  more  slaves  from  Africa,  since 
there  were  not  enough  of  them  to  be  drafted  from  the 
border  states. 

The  Anglo-Saxons  in  the  lower  South  were  becoming 


14  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

tropicized;  they  were  undergoing  a  transformation  which 
might  have  had  remarkable  consequences  if  the  Northern 
Anglo-Saxons  had  not  abruptly  halted  the  process.  In 
other  words,  the  lower  Southerners  were  becoming  adapted 
to  tropical  life  as  no  Nordics  had  been  for  ages.  Being 
tropicals,  not  temperates,  the  lower  Southerners  thought  lit- 
tle of  the  doctrine  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  In  the 
tropics,  the  natural  relationship  is  that  of  master  and  servant. 
White  men  in  the  tropics  do  not  prate  of  equality  in  the 
presence  of  elemental  inequality.  Political  cajolery  is  not 
the  method  of  managing  the  masses  in  the  tropics,  but 
naked  force.  Hypocrisy  is  not  a  vice  of  the  south,  but  of 
the  north.  It  springs  from  cold,  slow  blood,  not  from 
ardor  and  passion.  Thus,  the  Anglo-Saxons  in  the  far  South, 
by  1850,  had  lost  some  of  their  race  characteristics  while 
retaining  others  in  stronger  form:  northern  respectability 
and  idealism  were  gone,  along  with  northern  sourness,  hard- 
ness, avarice.  What  was  left  was  Anglo-Saxon  pluck,  re- 
sourcefulness, initiative.  What  had  been  added  was  a  tower- 
ing race  pride  and  an  inclination  to  ride  over  racial  groups 
considered  inferior.  The  Southerner  was  a  type  as  yet 
new  in  history:  he  was  the  one  real  creation  of  America. 
New  Englander,  Yankee,  was  but  English  super-shop- 
keeper; Virginian  was  but  English  farmer  plus  imagination 
and  a  sense  of  humor;  but  South  Carolinian  and  Missis- 
sippian  represented  a  distinct  phase  in  human  evolution. 
They  were  new. 

The  American  and  French  revolutions  were  built  on  a 
dogma  more  nearly  true  than  those  of  most  religions — the 
equality  of  men.  The  equality  of  white  men,  while  not 
absolutely  true,  has  much  of  the  quality  of  trueness.  Change 
the  clothes  of  the  white  aristocrat  and  the  white  proletarian, 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  15 

and  "handy-dandy,  which  is  the  justice,  which  is  the  thief?" 
Give  the  son  of  the  successful  plowman  half  a  dozen  years 
of  cultivation  and  the  son  of  the  ruined  country  gentleman 
half  a  dozen  years  of  poverty  and  neglect — and  clodhopper 
and  quality  change  places. 

It  is  precisely  this  latent  equality  that  led  to  the  decline 
of  democracy  in  the  South.  In  1776,  democracy  was  rail- 
ing at  church  and  state,  primogeniture,  pedigrees,  Tories: 
the  mob  of  those  on  the  outside  looking  in  was  naturally 
democratic.  Then  Tory  lands  were  confiscated  and  sold 
for  a  song,  and  such  an  opportunity  was  offered  for  swift 
rising  as  had  never  been  seen  before.  The  small  farmer 
democrats  of  1776  were  large  farmers  in  1786;  their  sons 
were  planters  in  1800.  By  181 5 — to  name  a  date — these 
had  become  gentlemen.  Surely,  this  rapid  development 
would  have  been  impossible  but  for  the  substantial  equality 
of  the  white  people  of  the  period.  Presently  the  new  genera- 
tion of  gentlemen  looked  down  on  their  brethren  who  had 
lacked  the  wit  or  luck  to  rise.  They  had  slaves  and  leisure, 
and  so  the  new  post-Revolutionary  aristocracy  came  into 
being. 

This  in  the  northern  South — Virginia,  Maryland,  North 
Carolina,  Kentucky.  It  was  even  more  so  in  the  lower 
South.  In  the  lower  South  were  both  equality  and  in- 
equality in  a  very  high  degree:  there  the  bulk  of  population 
was  not  small  farmer  and  planter,  but  white  and  black.  Race 
was  contrasted,  not  class — thus,  the  inequality  was  funda- 
mental. Democracy  does  well  enough  where  distinctions 
are  artificial;  it  fails  when  differences  are  real.  Social 
Contract,  Declaration  of  Independence,  rights  of  man  did 
not  alter  the  fact  that  a  gulf  yawned  in  the  lower  South 
between  Nordic  civilization  and  black  barbarism.     Anglo- 


16  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Saxon  could  change  place  with  Anglo-Saxon  after  a  few 
grammar  and  dancing  lessons,  but  Anglo-Saxon  and  African 
could  not  become  the  same.  Rousseau,  Paine,  Jefferson 
might  burn  incense  before  the  great  deity  Democracy  and 
whack  tom-toms,  but  this  miracle  was  beyond  the  power 
of  their  god. 

Thus,  while  the  North  and  Europe  were  becoming  more 
and  more  impregnated  with  the  truth  of  the  utter  artificiality 
of  class  distinctions,  the  lower  South  was  learning  to  the 
full  the  terrible  inequality  between  white  men  from  the 
North  Sea  and  black  men  from  the  Niger.  Before  this 
stubborn  fact,  theories  withered.  There  was  no  question 
in  the  lower  South  of  emancipation,  but  of  getting  more 
slaves — of  stretching  southward  into  the  cotton  lands  and 
building  up  vaster  estates.  In  the  economic  competition 
in  the  lower  South,  the  less  shrewd,  less  enduring,  less  en- 
ergetic, less  fortunate  white  men  failed,  and  became  cotton 
workers,  not  planters;  but  they  had  this  consolation  that 
they  belonged  to  the  superior  race  and,  thus,  were  masters, 
if  manless.  Nordic  degenerates  they  might  be,  yet  they 
were  Nordics  among  helots  and,  therefore,  in  an  essential 
sense,  aristocrats.  Aristocrats  often  in  rags  and  hungry,  but 
still  proud  of  their  race.  In  the  lower  South  the  equality 
of  the  white  race  was  very  real. 

This  was  the  environment  that  formed  Jefferson  Davis, 
who  was  essentially  a  tropical  Nordic,  though  modified 
somewhat  by  contact  with  the  North.  He  spent  the  forma- 
tive years  of  his  life  in  the  lower  South;  he  imbibed  its 
spirit,  sympathized  with  and  sought  to  further  its  ambi- 
tions, wore  its  crown.  He  also  wore  its  crown  of  thorns 
and  became  its  vicarious  sacrifice. 

It  was  because  the  tropic  Nordic  reached  out  after  new 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  17 

lands  on  which  to  work  his  slaves — or  by  means  of  which 
to  earn  slaves — that  the  American  republic  expanded.  The 
Northern  population  had  no  wish  to  spread  into  the 
mysterious  Southwest,  where  Aaron  Burr,  that  eminently 
tropic  Nordic,  sought  to  set  up  his  empire.  The  Northern 
spirit  was  intensive,  stay-at-home,  narrow,  practical,  effi~ 
cient.  The  Northerner  was  the  Englishman  successful 
enough  fo  be  able  to  stay  at  home.  The  Southerner  repre- 
sented the  Englishman  who  emigrates  to  other  lands  where 
success  is  easier.  The  Northerner,  after  tremendous 
struggles  and  by  the  exertion  of  such  cleverness  and  energy 
as  have  never  been  shown  before  or  since,  overcame  the 
great  natural  handicaps  of  America  as  an  industrial  center 
and  founded  the  mightiest  prosperity  the  world  has  known. 
The  Southerner,  emigrating  from  the  worn-out  lands  of  the 
border  states,  sought  to  build  up  in  the  far  South  a  Nordic 
rural  civilization. 

Both  Northerner  and  Southerner  had  great  virtues.  New 
England  was  the  cleanest  and  sanest  community  in  the  world. 
New  Englanders  were  business  men,  scholars,  athletes, 
altruists;  New  England  women  were  cultivated  companions. 
Lower  Southerners  (when  they  were  not  excessively  re- 
ligious) were  hot-blooded,  genial  sportsmen  who  would  lend 
their  last  dollar  to  a  friend  and  kill  him  for  an  ill-judged 
word.  They  were,  in  fact,  partly  mad,  because  they  were 
Nordics  baked  in  the  sun,  but  it  was  a  wonderful  mad- 
ness and  better,  in  some  ways,  than  sanity.  Southern 
women  were  charming,  if  uneducated,  and  many  of  them 
were  beautiful.  With  these  divergencies,  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  a  rift  appeared  between  the  original  Nordic 
race,  as  it  was  in  the  North,  and  the  tropicized  Nordics  of 
the  South  which  led  to  great  consequences.    This  change  in 


18  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  Nordic  race — this  new  development  in  the  hot  lands  of 
America,  unhampered  by  European  restraints — is  the  main 
cause  of  the  Civil  War.  Constitutional  disagreements  were 
only  symptoms,  economic  differences  were  but  a  secondary 
cause.  The  first  cause  was  tropicalism,  and  the  next  cot- 
ton; and  tropicalism  and  cotton  found  expression  in  states' 
rights  and  secession. 

Without  reflection,  the  lower  South  might  seem  to  have 
been  in  the  wrong,  but  is  this  so?  The  North  won,  or, 
to  put  it  more  plainly,  modernism  won  in  our  Civil  War. 
This  victory  seemed  a  real  triumph  of  progress  and  en- 
lightenment. Yet  it  was  a  defeat  for  Nordic  tendencies. 
Industrialism  won  in  the  Civil  War,  and  industrialism  is 
as  un-Nordic  as  agriculture  is  Nordic.  The  men  who  won 
the  war  for  the  North  were  Nordics,  but  they  did  not 
win  it  for  the  Nordic  race.  Ever  since  the  Civil  War, 
the  weakening  of  the  Nordic  strain  in  American  life  has 
proceeded  apace.  The  American  nation  is  more  and  more 
becoming  a  conglomeration  of  the  alien  races  of  Europe 
and  western  Asia:  it  steadily  grows  less  political,  less  in- 
dividual and  less  masterful — that  is,  less  Nordic. 

The  South  has  remained  the  only  Nordic  part  of  the 
nation.  It  has  lost  its  individuality  in  being  absorbed  by 
the  North,  but  its  blood  has  changed  little.  If  it  had  won  its 
independence  it  must  have  become  much  more  Nordic  than 
it  was,  for  it  would  have  attracted  Nordics  from  every- 
where. In  the  ante-bellum  Southern  life  the  Nordic  virtues 
were  imperatively  demanded:  personal  courage,  master- 
fulness, reckless  generosity.  Indeed,  in  the  lower  South, 
with  its  great  slave  population,  the  Nordic  race  was  not 
only  developing  but  growing  stronger,  because  it  had  found 
a  congenial  environment  despite  the  non-Nordic  climate.    If 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  19 

the  South  had  won,  there  would  have  been  in  the  world 
one  thoroughly  Nordic  country,  whereas  there  is  none. 
Everywhere,  in  Europe  and  America  alike,  the  non-Nordic 
races  flourish  and  prosper  while  the  master  race  declines. 

Even  before  the  lower  South  developed,  the  Nordic  spirit 
of  the  planters  asserted  itself.  A  Virginia  planter,  George 
Rogers  Clark,  won  the  Ohio  Valley  for  the  United  States. 
Another  Virginia  planter  glorified  what  would  have  been, 
otherwise,  a  mere  rights-of-man  presidential  term  by  ac- 
quiring Louisiana  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  North. 
Andrew  Jackson,  a  small-farmer  Southerner,  crushed  the 
Indians  in  the  Gulf  region  and  paved  the  way  for  the  gain 
of  Florida.  Clay  and  Calhoun,  Kentucky  and  South  Caro- 
lina planters,  tried  to  win  Canada  in  1812. 

The  attempt  to  expand  northward  failed,  but  there  was 
nothing  to  prevent  a  stretch  southward  into  Aaron  Burr's 
dream  empire.  Here  were  plains  capable  of  raising  ex- 
cellent cotton  that  were  inhabited  only  by  buffaloes  and 
scattered  Indians.  Southerners,  settling  in  these  unoccupied 
lands  beyond  the  Sabine,  sought  to  bring  the  great  South- 
west under  American  control.  These  adventurers-  from 
Tennessee,  Alabama,  Mississippi  and  Louisiana — Nordics 
beginning  to  be  tropicized — looked  first  toward  the  acquisi- 
tion of  Texas,  and  later  toward  Cuba,  Mexico  and  Cen- 
tral America.  They  dreamed,  indeed,  of  founding  a  great 
Anglo-Saxon  community  in  the  tropics,  supported  by  the 
labor  of  slaves  or  peons.  It  was  a  stirring  conception,  the 
aspiration  of  a  dominant  race.  If  they  had  had  their  way, 
Anglo-Saxon  America  would  now  extend  from  Maine  to 
Panama,  possibly  much  farther,  and  would  include  the 
greater  Antilles.  Such  an  expansion  would  have  continued 
the  power  of  the  South  for  another  term  of  years  and  might 


20  JEFFEP     JN  DAVIS 

have  post**pned  the  Civil  f  ^or  another  decade.  But  the 
North,  .>nich  was  unable  to  prevent  the  acquisition  of 
Louisiana  and  Florida  and  which  did  not  have  quite  the 
power  to  keep  Texas  out  of  the  Union,  finally  was  strong 
enough  to  block  the  efforts  of  the  South  to  win  Mexico, 
Cuba  and  Central  America.  American  expansion  was  a 
half-completed  work,  cut  short  on  the  eve  of  its  greatest 
triumphs. 

The  danger  to  itself  drove  the  North  to  limit  the  ex- 
tension of  the  United  States,  causing  it  to  lose  some  of 
the  finest  lands  on  earth.  The  North  of  the  thirties  and 
forties,  following  in  the  footsteps  of  England,  was  engaged 
in  turning  the  United  States  from  an  agricultural  com- 
munity into  a  modern  industrial  state.  It  was  a  phase 
of  the  mightiest  revolution  the  world  has  ever  known,  by 
means  of  which  the  power  has  passed  from  the  landowners, 
the  squires,  the  slaveholders,  into  the  hands  of  the  manu- 
facturers and  financiers.  In  England  the  revolution  pro- 
ceeded bloodlessly;  in  the  United  States  it  was  accom- 
plished only  through  war. 

What  stood  in  the  way  of  the  industrial  conquest  of 
America  was  the  tropic  South.  The  northern  South  would 
not  have  blocked  the  game,  but  the  lower  South  attempted 
to  do  so  and,  failing,  sought  to  leave  the  Union  and  follow 
its  own  destiny.  But  the  industrial  North  refused  to  allow 
the  republic  to  be  disrupted  and  its  market  to  go  glimmer- 
ing, and  so  there  came  about  the  Civil  War. 

The  North,  with  that  shrewd  Anglo-Saxon  trick  of  putting 
an  adversary  in  the  wrong,  called  the  lower  South  the 
Slave  Power  and  its  effort  to  maintain  the  supremacy  of 
agriculture  the  Great  Conspiracy.  The  term  " Slave  Power" 
mistakes  result  for  cause.    The  proper  name  is  the  Nordic 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  21 

South.  If  there  had  been  i  flSgro  slaves,  the  <  welopment 
of  the  South  would  have  been  much  what  u  was.  A 
tropicized  Anglo-Saxon  population  in  the  Gulf  region  would 
have  preferred  planting  to  mill-owning,  would  have  at- 
tempted to  extend  farther  southward,  and  would  have  de- 
fied the  industrial  North  Slavery  has  been  too  much  glori- 
fied. It  was  but  an  incident  in  the  conflict,  the  two  deter- 
mining factors  of  which  were  Nordic  blood  and  hot  climate. 
The  Civil  War  was,  in  essence,  a  struggle  between  that 
part  of  the  Nordic  race  which  was  prepared  to  renounce  its 
tradition  of  mastery  for  equality,  modernism  and  material 
comfort  and  that  part  of  the  race  which  was  resolved,  de- 
spite modernity,  to  remain  true  to  its  ruling  instincts. 
It  was  a  conflict  between  a  community  rapidly  becoming 
un-Nordicized  by  industry  and  non-Nordic  immigration  and 
a  community  which  had  become  more  thoroughly  Nordic 
than  at  the  settlement  by  reason  of  slavery  and  purely 
agricultural  pursuits. 

Everywhere  else  in  the  world  industrialism  gained  at  the 
expense  of  agriculture  as  the  non-Nordic  race  elements  pre- 
vailed over  the  Nordic.  This  was  not  the  case  in  America, 
even  though  a  vast  non-Nordic  immigration  was  swelling 
the  population  of  the  North  without  aiding  the  South.  In 
spite  of  the  industrial  tendencies  of  the  age,  the  lower 
Southerners  deliberately  went  their  own  way,  careless  of 
the  censure  passed  by  a  wage-earning  world  on  bond  slavery. 
These  planters  of  the  lower  South  were  the  strongest  and 
most  original  men  that  America  has  ever  produced.  They 
and  the  Westerners  are  the  only  Americans  that  are  not 
part  European. 

So  powerful  were  the  planters  that  the  North  viewed  with 
profound  dismay  their  efforts  to  extend  the  United  States 


22  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

into  Mexico.  The  North  was  waiting  as  patiently  as  a 
dutiful  son  waits  for  the  demise  of  a  rich  father  to  inherit 
the  political  power  of  the  country.  Elementary  arithmetic 
demonstrated  that  within  a  certain  period  the  population 
of  the  North  would,  thanks  to  immigration,  so  far  out- 
number that  of  the  South  that  political  control  would  pass 
into  Northern  hands.  For  some  years  the  North  had^ owned 
the  House  of  Representatives;  it  also  desired  the  Senate. 
To  secure  the  Senate,  it  had,  in  1820,  forced  the  Missouri 
Compromise  on  the  South,  whereby  the  South  was  prevented 
from  extending  northward  by  the  exclusion  of  slavery  from 
the  Louisiana  territory  north  of  a  certain  geographical  line 
running  along  the  southern  border  of  Missouri,  which 
could  not  itself  be  kept  from  becoming  a  Southern  state 
because  it  had  been  settled  by  a  Southern  population.  Thus, 
the  South  would  have  only  a  state  or  two  more  from  the 
Louisiana  territory  while  the  North  would  have  many. 
The  result  would  be  that  the  South  would  be  eventually 
outnumbered  in  the  Senate,  as  well  as  in  the  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives, and  the  North  would  be  able  to  pass  protec- 
tive measures  necessary  to  its  prosperity.  Naturally,  then, 
the  industrial  Northerners  were  dismayed  when  the  lower 
Southerners  threatened  to  acquire  new  lands  to  be  made 
into  new  states  to  keep  the  North  out  of  its  just  inheritance. 
No  use  to  wait  for  a  legatee  who  will  not  die.  The  North 
abandoned  its  friendly  attitude  toward  the  South,  and  the 
conflict  over  the  admission  of  Texas  inaugurated  a  struggle 
that  did  not  end  until  twenty  years  later  in  the  debacle  of 
1865. 

The  tariff  was  only  one  reason  among  many  why  the  North 
desired  to  gain  control  of  the  government  and  check  the 
South.    The  North  put  its  faith  in  modern  European  theories 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  28 

and  practices.  It  was  one  with  Europe  in  placing  emphasis 
on  material  well-being  as  the  great  attainable  object  in  life. 
Humanity  had  abandoned  its  religious  and  political  ideals, 
which  distracted  it  so  long,  and  had  come  down  to  an 
economic  basis — an  industrial  basis.  The  South  was  the 
single  exception  in  the  civilized  world.  It  was  not  material- 
istic and  practical.  It  was  drifting  away  from  equality  and 
the  rights  of  man;  from  the  tepid  religion  of  the  times; 
from  Victorian  commonplaceness;  from  the  rather  dismal 
civilization  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  with  its  dull, 
conventional,  ordered  life.  The  South  was  drifting  into  the 
tropics,  into  a  new  environment.  It  was  preparing  to  master 
and  rule  the  mixed  races  of  Latin  America,  to  set  up  a 
great  empire  based  on  slavery  or  peonage — an  empire  which 
would  have,  indeed,  a  sort  of  equality,  the  equality  of  slave 
driver  with  slave  driver  and  slave  with  slave.  It  was 
the  most  remarkable  development  of  the  Nordic  race  in 
modern  history,  but  it  was  a  development  that  ran  counter 
to  all  the  tendencies  of  the  North.  For  this  reason,  an 
intense  hatred  of  slavery  arose  in  New  England. 

Slavery  seemed  to  the  North  to  be  an  immoral  anachro- 
nism. It  was  condemned  by  the  public  opinion  of  Europe. 
Consequently,  men  argued  that  it  must  be  wrong.  The 
wrong-headedness  of  the  South  in  maintaining  slavery  and 
the  Tightness  of  the  North  on  the  issue  have  become  truisms. 
But  at  that  time  all  the  world  understood  the  evils  of  slavery 
but  not  the  evils  of  the  industrial  system.  (Did  we  cast 
out  the  seven  devils  of  slavery  only  that  seventy  new  devils 
might  enter  it?)  In  the  mid-century  the  North  wore  an  air 
of  complacent  virtue;  it  was  on  high  ground.  The  northern 
South — particularly  Virginia — felt  the  modern  condemna- 
tion of  slavery  keenly  and  was  put  on  the  defensive;  but 


24  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  lower  South,  which  saw  no  reason  to  apologize  for  so 
Nordic  an  institution,  was  enraged.  As  time  passed,  the 
modernism  of  the  North  and  the  Nordicism  of  the  South 
came  more  and  more  into  conflict,  politically  and  philo- 
sophically, foreshadowing  the  military  struggle.  In  a  cer- 
tain sense,  the  conflict  was  both  offensive  and  defensive 
on  both  sides;  but  perhaps  the  North  was  right  in  think- 
ing that  the  South  was  largely  on  the  aggressive  and  itself, 
on  the  defensive. 

In  the  mid-nineteenth  century  the  South  was  the  most 
striking  and  individualist  country  on  earth.  It  was  some- 
thing new  in  human  life  and  a  threat  to  Europeanism.  If 
the  South  had  prevailed  over  the  North  in  the  political 
contest  that  preceded  the  Civil  War,  the  North  would  prob- 
ably have  seceded,  just  as  the  South  did  when  it  lost.  The 
United  States  would  have  been  profoundly  changed.  It 
would  have  been  individualistic,  militaristic,  adventurous, 
given  to  the  great  outdoor  spaces  instead  of  to  skyscrapers 
and  offices.  It  might  have  been  a  much  worse  country  than 
it  is  at  present,  but  it  would  have  been  infinitely  more 
picturesque. 

In  the  forties  the  North  and  South  were  not  unevenly 
balanced.  The  North  opposed  greater  numbers  to  greater 
astuteness.  Industrial  North  and  planter  South  were  politi- 
cally deadlocked,  each  having  one  house  of  Congress,  and 
both  looked  to  the  West  to  cut  the  knot.  The  West  was 
agricultural  and,  thus,  economically  allied  to  the  South; 
but  it  was  anti-slavery  and  democratic  and,  thus,  socially, 
Northern.  Social  forces  prevailed  over  economic,  as  has 
frequently  happened  in  history.  But  in  the  forties  the  West 
looked  southward  because  it  had  no  objection  to  the  South- 
ern scheme  of  annexing  Texas  and  Oregon.    At  that  time  the 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  25 

West  stood  with  the  South  and  brought  about  the  acquisition 
of  Texas. 

By  1844  Texas  had  become  the  great  issue  in  American 
politics.  No  more  important  issue  has  ever  appeared  in 
our  political  life,  for  the  gain  of  Texas  was  but  the  first 
step  in  a  plan  that  looked  toward  Mexico  proper  and  South 
America.  Texas  so  stirred  the  passions  of  the  time  that 
history,  even  yet,  reflects  it.  Thus  the  annexation  of  Texas 
is  still  represented  as  a  reprehensible  act,  and  the  Mexi- 
can War  that  followed  as  the  result  of  pure  aggression  on 
the  American  part.  Our  historians  have  taken  great  pains 
to  prove  their  country  wrong.  Yet  the  admission  of  Texas 
to  the  Union  was  one  of  the  most  beneficent  and  most  nec- 
essary measures  the  country  has  ever  taken.  Texas,  in  the 
early  forties,  had  become  entirely  independent  of  Mexico 
and  was  the  football  of  European  intrigue.  Both  England 
and  France  wished  to  annex  it;  but  the  Texans,  who  were 
mainly  emigrants  from  the  Southern  states,  looked  to  Amer- 
ica. It  would  have  been  criminal  negligence  for  the  re- 
public to  have  allowed  this  magnificent  territory,  eager  to 
enter  the  Union,  to  become  a  dominion  of  some  trans- 
Atlantic  power.  We  should  never  have  forgiven  our  fore- 
fathers if  they  had  refused  to  accept  the  consequences  of 
Southern  expansion  and  declined  Texas.  Yet  so  strong  was 
the  opposition  in  the  North  to  this  extension  of  the  Ameri- 
can boundary  toward  the  tropics  that  there  was  a  distinct 
danger  that  Texas  would  not  become  a  part  of  the  republic. 
New  England  was  awake  to  the  danger  to  modern  ideas  of 
the  rapidly  developing  lower  South. 

That  Texas  to-day  is  a  state  of  the  Union  is  mainly  owing 
to  the  labors  of  three  men,  John  Tyler,  John  C.  Calhoun  and 
Robert  J.  Walker.    Tyler,  an  expansionist  of  decided  views 


26  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

and  in  full  sympathy  with  the  lower  South,  on  becoming 
President  of  the  United  States  at  the  death  of  William 
Henry  Harrison,  appointed  Calhoun  Secretary  of  State 
to  bring  about  annexation.  Walker's  share  was  in  making 
annexation  a  Democratic  party  measure. 

Calhoun,  the  leader  of  the  lower  Souths  even  now  seems 
a  great  statesman.  Alike  at  home  in  the  Senate  and  in 
the  cabinet,  he  reached  a  height  of  intellectual  and  moral 
preeminence  such  as  few  Americans  have  ever  attained.  He 
began  his  career  as  a  nationalist  in  the  War  of  1812,  but 
he  changed  his  attitude  when  he  saw  that  Northern  in- 
dustrialism threatened  the  planter  South. 

The  main  conflict  of  his  life  arose  over  the  tariff.  He 
brought  about,  in  1832,  the  "nullification"  by  South  Caro- 
lina of  the  existing  protective  tariff  act.  But  President 
Andrew  Jackson  refused  to  recognize  the  right  of  a  state 
to  void  federal  acts,  and  for  a  time  there  seemed  danger 
of  war.  Then  Henry  Clay  came  forward  to  arrange  one 
of  his  compromises,  by  which  he  kept  the  Union  undissolved 
for  thirty  years.  South  Carolina  gave  up  nullification  and 
Congress  reduced  the  tariff.  The  tariff  continued  to  be  re- 
duced, from  time  to  time,  until  the  eve  of  the  Civil  War. 

This  controversy  led  Calhoun  to  believe  that  the  South 
must  unite  against  the  North  or  fall.  He  had  no  liking  for 
secession;  what  he  aimed  at  was  to  make  the  South  strong 
enough  to  hold  its  own  within  the  Union.  He  knew  that  the 
planter  South  rested  on  slavery  and  that  it  could  not  afford 
to  remain  quiescent  under  the  anti-slavery  propaganda  of 
the  North.  The  South  must  expand  in  order  to  balance 
the  North,  which  was  constantly  being  reen forced  by  the 
non-Nordic  immigration  from  Europe.  Consequently,  he 
had  long  hungered  for  Texas. 


THE  TROPIC  NORDICS  27 

Calhoun's  expansionist  views  were  eagerly  accepted  by 
the  younger  generation  of  Southern  politicians,  who  looked 
up  to  him  much  as  his  own  generation  had  looked  up  to 
Jefferson.  Yet  there  was  a  difference  between  the  two 
men  which  measured  the  failure  of  planter  democracy. 
Jefferson  had  fought  for  liberty  and  self-expression  against 
the  old  order  of  Europe.  Calhoun  stood  on  the  defensive, 
struggling  to  save  agrarianism  from  the  consequences  of 
Jefferson's  doctrines  and  the  industrial  invasion.  That  he 
played  a  losing  game  seems  to  have  been  evident  to  him, 
for  there  is  a  certain  look  of  defeat  in  his  sad  Irish  face,  as 
we  see  it  in  the  pictures.  Yet  he  fought  with  the  utmost 
tenacity  to  the  last  moment  of  his  life. 

Calhoun,  together  with  Robert  J.  Walker,  that  atomy  of 
genius,  that  expansionist  who  would  not  become  secessionist, 
began  to  plan  for  the  annexation  of  Texas  and  of  Cuba 
as  well.  When  Calhoun  was  called  into  the  cabinet,  he 
made  a  treaty  with  Texas  for  its  admission  to  the  Union. 
To  the  dismay  of  the  annexationists,  however,  the  Senate  re- 
jected the  treaty,  just  as  the  Senate  rejected  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles  and  the  League  of  Nations  in  191 9.  The  result 
was  that  the  admission  of  Texas  became  the  main  issue 
of  the  presidential  campaign  of  1844  in  the  same  way  that 
the  League  of  Nations  became  the  main  issue  in  the  cam- 
paign of  1920.  The  Democrats  nominated  James  K.  Polk 
on  an  expansionist  platform  that  called  for  both  Texas  and 
Oregon.  South  and  West  joined  in  an  expansionist  alliance. 
Henry  Clay,  the  Whig  candidate,  attempted  to  straddle  the 
issue,  with  the  result  that  he  was  defeated.  The  American 
people  preferred  the  average  man  who  stood  for  the  growth 
of  the  republic  to  the  genius  who  did  not  know  where  he 
stood.    Thus,  the  lower  South,  with  its  tropical  policy,  and 


28  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  West,  with  its  eagerness  for  extension  on  the  Pacific, 
made  common  cause  against  the  North,  the  representative  of 
industrialism  and  European  civilization.  The  North  pre- 
ferred the  loss  of  rich  provinces  to  the  extension  of  slavery — 
that  is,  to  the  Nordic  empire  in  the  tropics  which  the  lower 
Southerners  were  building  up  and  which  threatened  the 
North. 

It  was  into  this  stormy  arena,  at  this  inspiring  moment, 
that  Jefferson  Davis  made  his  entrance.  It  was  a  singular 
coincidence  that  the  leader  of  the  secession  cause  appeared 
in  politics  at  the  very  moment  with  the  issue  that  made 
secession  inevitable. 


Ill 

JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

BY  another  coincidence,  Jefferson  Davis,  the  Southern 
chief,  was  born  in  Kentucky,  that  meeting  place  of 
American  currents,  in  1808  at  no  great  distance  from  the 
home  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  who  was  born  in  1809.  Davis, 
in  later  life,  was  something  of  an  aristocrat,  in  obedience 
to  the  social  law  of  his  section,  just  as  Lincoln,  also  in 
obedience  to  social  law,  remained  a  plain  man  of  the  peo- 
ple. It  is  one  of  the  prime  advantages  of  a  republic  that 
it  develops  an  aristocrat  or  democrat  out  of  the  raw  ma- 
terial, as  the  need  is,  while  monarchies  go  on  reproducing 
immemorial  types  with  little  deviation. 

Jefferson  Davis  came  of  plain  but  good  stock,  of  "poor 
but  honest"  parents.  He  was  of  Welsh  descent  and  Penn- 
sylvania antecedents,  for  his  grandfather,  Evan  Davis,  was 
a  native  of  Philadelphia.  His  father,  Samuel  Davis,  was 
a  small  farmer  in  Kentucky  who  had  met  with  no  great 
success  in  life  when  the  future  head  of  the  Confederacy 
was  born.  The  child  was  named  after  the  reigning  Presi- 
dent in  precisely  the  same  way  in  which  babies  were  named 
after  him  when  he  himself  became  a  President.  Beyond 
doubt,  his  name  was  originally  Thomas  Jefferson,  but,  like 
Woodrow  Wilson,  he  dropped  the  Thomas,  giving  himself 
a  sonorous  and  distinctive  name.  It  had  something  to  do 
with  his  success  in  life:  men  with  ill-sounding  names  seldom 

rise  high  in  politics. 

29 


30  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

The  guiding  force  in  Jefferson  Davis's  life,  the  influence 
that  started  him  on  the  road  to  greatness,  was  his  elder 
brother.  Surely  there  has  seldom  been  a  more  admirable 
elder  brother  than  Joseph  Emory  Davis.  But  for  him  Jeffer- 
son Davis  would  have  found  his  prospects  in  life  very  differ- 
ent. Joseph  Davis  was  really  the  founder  of  the  family, 
a  business  man  of  great  ability  who  made  a  fortune  in  cot- 
ton-planting in  a  few  years  and  raised  the  Davises  from  the 
small  farmer  class  into  the  planter  aristocracy.  It  happened, 
therefore,  that  Jefferson  Davis,  though  a  poor  farmer's 
son,  was  not  a  self-made  man:  he  had  his  path  smoothed 
for  him.  To  his  brother  he  mainly  owed  his  education  and 
settlement  in  life. 

The  parent  Davis  was  looked  on  by  his  family  as  a  per- 
son of  superior  wisdom,  but  actually  he  was  a  failure.  He 
wandered  from  Kentucky  into  Mississippi  and  across  to  the 
southwest  corner  of  that  state,  where  he  found  a  final  home. 
As  schools  were  few  in  the  Southwest  of  that  day,  the  boy 
Jefferson  Davis  was  educated  in  Kentucky  at  a  private 
academy  and  at  Transylvania  University.  Then  his  whole 
career  was  given  a  definite  direction  by  an  appointment  to 
West  Point  which  Joseph  Davis  secured  for  him.  He  was 
at  the  military  academy  with  such  other  notables  as  Robert 
E.  Lee  and  Joseph  E.  Johnston.  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  a 
model  student  like  Lee,  hating  mathematics  and  slighting 
his  courses  for  desultory  reading,  but  he  graduated  in  1828 
with  a  fair  class  standing  and  carried  away  with  him  an 
almost  pathetic  faith  in  education.  In  later  life,  when  the 
head  of  a  nation,  he  hesitated  to  appoint  officers  to  high 
rank  who  did  not  possess  diplomas  from  the  school  on  the 
Hudson.  Davis  carried  away,  too,  a  fair  share  of  West  Point 
arrogance.     Once,  years  afterward,  he  was  led  to  utter  a 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  31 

sneer  at  tailors  while  speaking  in  Congress,  whereupon  that 
very  doughty  tailor,  Andrew  Johnson,  arose  and  rebuked  him 
hotly,  to  the  great  amusement  of  the  House.  The  incident 
was  in  keeping  with  Davis's  West  Point  attitude  toward 
life. 

The  young  lieutenant,  on  leaving  the  military  academy, 
spent  some  years  in  the  Northwest  and  had  some  slight 
experience  of  warfare  in  the  Black  Hawk  War.  He  showed 
his  characteristics  at  this  early  period.  On  one  occasion 
he  was  chased  in  a  canoe  by  a  canoe  of  hostile  Indians; 
he  rigged  up  a  sail  and  escaped.  This  was  a  fine  example 
of  his  high-strung  courage  and  resourcefulness.  But  the 
rough  life  did  not  suit  his  sensitive  nerves  and  a  constitu- 
tion enduring  but  not  robust,  and  he  nearly  died  of  pneu- 
monia in  an  isolated  army  post  in  a  terrible  winter.  At 
length,  weary  of  the  rude  frontier  of  the  thirties,  he  re- 
signed his  commission  and  went  South  to  become  a  planter 
under  his  brother's  tutelage.  Love,  too,  had  something  to 
do  with  this  change,  for  Davis  had  become  engaged  to  the 
daughter  of  his  commanding  officer,  Zachary  Taylor.  The 
latter  had  taken  a  strong  dislike  to  the  lieutenant,  not  im- 
probably on  account  of  his  preciousness,  for  Taylor  was  a 
rough,  uneducated  Indian  fighter  and  must  have  been  galled 
by  his  would-be  son-in-law's  probably  too  obvious  attitude 
of  superiority. 

Davis  at  length  triumphed  in  his  suit  and  married  the 
girl,  but  the  romance  was  short-lived,  as  the  young  wife 
died  of  malaria  in  Mississippi  within  a  year  of  the  wedding. 
Fever  also  laid  the  husband  low  for  a  time.  The  effect  of 
his  wife's  death  on  Jefferson  Davis  was  very  marked.  Al- 
ways a  little  inclined  to  seclusion,  he  lived  a  retired  life 
on  his  Mississippi  plantation  for  years,  spending  his  leisure 


32  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

hours  in  reading  and  in  talk  with  his  brother  Joseph.  The 
latter  had  given  him  Brierfield,  a  fine  tract  of  land  on 
the  Mississippi  River  and  sold  him  fourteen  slaves  on  credit. 
The  estate  was  virgin  soil.  Jefferson  Davis  cleared  the  land 
himself,  working  side  by  side  with  his  slaves,  and  had 
in  a  comparatively  short  time  one  of  the  best  plantations 
in  the  state.  It  would  appear  from  this  that  he  was  a 
good  administrator,  though  it  is  difficult  to  determine  the 
exact  extent  of  his  business  ability  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
he  was  under  Joseph's  guidance.  The  brothers  lived  on 
adjoining  plantations,  and  Jefferson  Davis  profited  by  the 
advice  and  support  of  one  of  the  ablest  planters  of  the 
period.  The  rich  land  he  had  not  won  for  himself  made 
fine  crops  of  cotton,  affording  him  a  good  income.  He 
eventually  grew  to  be  a  man  of  some  wealth,  but  never 
showed  any  great  interest  in  money-making.  His  tastes 
and  ambition  lay  in  another  direction. 

For  the  decade  from  1835  to  1845,  Jefferson  Davis  lived 
the  life  of  a  planter,  though  not  that  of  a  typical  planter. 
He  was  much  in  the  open  and  his  health,  weak  for  a  long 
time  from  malaria,  improved  from  long  horseback  rides  on 
flower-bordered  woodland  roads.  His  nervous  system,  how- 
ever, never  became  strong,  and  he  continued  to  be  neuras- 
thenic through  the  whole  subsequent  period  of  his  life. 
In  fact,  he  was  a  good  deal  of  an  invalid.  His  weakness 
was  due,  in  part,  to  eyestrain,  for  he  practically  lost  the 
sight  of  one  eye  by  over-use.  Going  little  in  the  society 
of  the  neighborhood  and  having  much  time  on  his  hands, 
he  passed  whole  days  in  reading,  until  he  developed  into  a 
well-educated  man.  His  favorite  field  was  English  history, 
essays  and  oratory.  He  also  read  Latin  and  Greek  easily 
and  browsed  in  fiction  and  poetry.     Scott,  of  course,  was 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  33 

familiar  to  him,  as  were  Burns  and  Moore,  but  he  detested 
Milton.  After  the  fashion  of  the  time,  he  made  an  ex- 
haustive study  of  the  United  States  Constitution.  In  one 
sense,  this  prolonged  period  of  reading  was  an  excellent 
training  for  his  career  in  politics,  but  in  another  way  it 
was  not,  for  he  saw  too  much  of  books  and  too  little  of 
men  and  developed  his  naturally  theoretical,  idealistic,  doc- 
trinaire mental  tendency  at  the  expense  of  reality. 

It  is  the  misfortune  of  men  that  they  follow  the  line  of 
least  resistance  unless  fate  intervenes  sharply  for  their 
good.  In  the  case  of  great  men  this  intervention  is  cus- 
tomary. They  are  great  simply  because  they  are  forced 
to  struggle  against  and  overcome  their  limitations.  Wash- 
ington would  have  been  merely  known  as  a  remarkably  suc- 
cessful and  close-fisted  planter  if  a  border  war  had  not 
occurred  in  time  to  develop  his  military  tastes  and  quicken 
him  out  of  his  somber  practicalness.  The  Revolution  trans- 
formed Jefferson  from  a  literary  lawyer  into  a  world  figure. 
It  was  the  lot  of  Jefferson  Davis  not  to  be  forced  by  destiny 
to  overcome  his  faults.  What  he  needed  was  rough  con- 
tact with  life;  what  he  did  for  too  long  a  period  was  to 
live  as  a  recluse. 

In  the  decade  on  the  plantation,  his  character  developed 
so  fully  that  there  was  no  notable  change  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  He  had  grown  from  a  nervous,  high-strung  boy  into 
a  sensitive  though  self-contained  man.  He  had  no  lack  of 
pluck,  but  he  disliked  the  army  and  left  it.  In  his  solitary 
plantation  life  he  was  able  to  indulge  his  egoism,  and  his 
keen  responsiveness  to  suggestion  grew  into  a  sort  of  neuro- 
sis. In  the  Senate,  and  afterward  as  President,  he  was  a 
martyr  to  neuralgic  headaches,  which  completely  prostrated 
him  at  times.    If  he  had  not  had  a  most  powerful  will,  he 


34  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

would  have  become  a  valetudinarian  idler,  since  he  was  not 
obliged  to  struggle  for  a  living;  but  his  will  redeemed  him 
and  made  the  neurasthenic  one  of  the  foremost  men  of  his 
day.  Indeed,  Jefferson  Davis  possessed  the  genius  com- 
bination— neurosis  and  will.  This  is  the  combination  that 
made  Caesar,  Cromwell  and  Napoleon.  What  he  lacked  that 
they  had  was  a  strong  sense  of  reality.  Caesar,  Cromwell 
and  Napoleon  were  all  an  ti- theorists  and  men  of  action: 
Jefferson  Davis  was  a  doctrinaire  who  would  never  have 
ventured  into  the  life  of  action  at  all  but  for  his  overpowering 
ambition. 

He  was  a  soldier  whose  ambition  was  inspired  by  war 
but  who  did  not  much  like  fighting  for  fighting's  sake.  The 
army  when  he  belonged  to  it  was  a  paradise  for  adventurers, 
for  the  Far  West  of  those  days  was  the  enchanted  land  of 
Indians  and  buffaloes  of  which  every  boy  dreams.  But 
Davis  passed  from  the  army  and  adventure,  probably  be- 
cause the  army  in  the  thirties  seemed  to  offer  little  opportu- 
nity to  an  ambitious  man,  and  he  was  very  ambitious.  In 
fact,  he  was  almost  altogether  ambition.  Turned  from  the 
career  of  a  military  conqueror,  on  which  his  boyish  fancy 
had  fed,  by  the  lack  of  opportunity — since  there  must  be 
war  before  there  can  be  conquerors — Jefferson  Davis  looked 
toward  the  other  sphere  open  to  ambition,  and  always  open, 
that  of  politics.  His  line  of  reading  indicates  that  he  de- 
liberately prepared  himself  for  political  life  and  then,  when 
he  felt  himself  ready,  made  the  plunge.  His  choice  was,  in 
one  sense,  wise.  If  he  had  remained  a  soldier,  he  would 
probably  have  never  risen  to  greatness.  As  a  poli- 
tician, he  came  to  be  one  of  the  foremost  figures  in  American 
history. 

It  should  be  noted  that  at  this  time,  and  in  America, 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  35 

literature  was  not  a  field  for  ambition.  Although  Cooper, 
Irving  and  Hawthorne  were  producing  a  real  literature,  they 
were  largely  unconsidered  pioneers.  The  imagination  of  the 
American  of  that  day  was  not  fired  by  the  thought  of  a 
literary  career:  it  dwelt  on  war  and  politics.  If  Davis  had 
lived  in  our  time,  he  would  probably  have  become  a  writer 
instead  of  a  politician,  or  at  least  a  writer-politician.  But 
living  when  he  did,  he  chose  the  road  that  appealed  to  his 
large  ambition.  Abandoning  his  quiet  life  on  his  rich 
plantation — a  life  which  for  ease,  independence  and  oppor- 
tunity for  happiness  has  been  rarely  equaled  on  earth — he 
took  up  the  cross  of  politics,  exchanging  comfort  and  leisure 
for  labor,  anxiety  and  detraction. 

In  his  long  period  of  seclusion  and  preparation  for  politics, 
Jefferson  Davis  did  one  notable  thing:  he  perfected  on  his 
own  plantation  the  institution  of  slavery.  That  is,  he  placed 
the  relation  of  master  and  bondman  on  the  basis  of  jus- 
tice; he  was  in  fact,  as  well  as  in  theory,  the  father  of  his 
servants.  His  slaves  were  exceedingly  well-cared  for  and 
remarkably  trained.  Capable  negroes  were  trusted  in  a 
high  degree.  No  corporal  punishment  was  allowed  on  the 
plantation  except  by  the  judgment  of  a  negro  jury,  which 
sat  on  all  offenses  against  the  rules  of  the  place.  The 
negroes  were  happy  and  remained  devoted  to  Davis  through 
their  whole  lives;  he  was  on  terms  of  almost  intimate  friend- 
ship with  some  of  them.  If  all  slave-owners  had  employed 
the  methods  of  Jefferson  Davis,  slavery  would  have  had  just 
claims  to  be  considered  a  beneficent  institution.  No  doubt, 
Davis's  exceptional  treatment  of  his  chattels  was  partly 
due  to  his  sensitiveness,  which  shrank  with  more  than 
womanly  repulsion  from  the  sight  of  pain.  Yet  it  is  likely 
that  his  methods  were  also  due  in  part  to  propagandist  pur- 


36  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

poses.  Davis  was  a  champion  of  a  bitterly  assailed  institu- 
tion, and  he  must  have  desired  to  present  slavery  to  the 
world  in  the  best  possible  light.  He  succeeded  amazingly. 
His  plantation  was  a  model,  and  his  well-trained  negroes  re- 
mained steadily  at  work  amidst  the  demoralization  of  war 
and  during  the  occupation  of  the  country  by  the  enemy. 
After  the  close  of  the  war,  his  ex-slaves  were  pointed  out 
as  examples  of  what  slaves  might  become  when  freed:  the 
eulogists  did  not  know  that  the  freedmen  merely  exemplified 
the  admirable  discipline  possible  under  slavery. 

If  Jefferson  Davis  had  remained  in  the  army,  his  de- 
velopment would  have  been  very  different.  But  living  his 
solitary  life  on  his  little  barony,  influenced  by  literature  on 
one  hand  and  by  his  semi-tropical  surroundings  on  the  other, 
he  became  the  political  champion  of  the  lower  South  and 
the  leader  of  the  tropicalized  planters,  who  looked  more  and 
more  longingly  toward  golden  Mexico.  It  is  difficult  for 
Northerners  to  comprehend  the  influences  that  molded  him: 
his  isolation  in  the  sun-baked  country  along  the  Mississippi, 
amidst  cotton  fields  and  negro  villages;  the  free,  half -wild 
life;  the  utter  lack  of  city  contacts  and  modernity;  responsi- 
bility and  the  habit  of  command;  tropic  barbarism  acting  on 
Nordic  blood.  If  Jefferson  Davis  had  not  entered  politics 
and  spent  much  of  his  time  in  Washington,  he  would  have  be- 
come a  typically  overbearing,  passionate  lower  South  planter. 
As  it  was,  he  left  his  isolation  in  time  to  save  himself  from 
provincialism  and  yet  not  soon  enough  to  keep  the  tropics 
out  of  his  soul.  His  life  for  a  decade  was  such  as  cannot 
be  paralleled  on  earth  nowadays.  He  rode  day  after  day 
through  his  cotton  fields,  oblivious  of  the  outside  world. 
For  relaxation,  he  went  alligator-hunting  in  backwaters 
of  bayous  or  dallied  in  the  azalea-perfumed  outdoors,  dream- 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  37 

ing.  Thus  the  proud,  solitary,  sensitive,  imaginative  soul 
of  Jefferson  Davis  grew  to  maturity. 

If  he  had  been  less  ambitious  and  resolute,  he  would 
have  gone  on  to  the  end  as  a  student  and  spectator  of  life: 
that  was  his  natural  tendency.  But  ambition  and  a  restless- 
ness that  came  from  partially  restored  health  stirred  him  at 
last  out  of  an  existence  that  might  have  degenerated  into 
mere  lotos-eating.  It  is  difficult  for  us  of  the  present  time, 
accustomed  as  we  are  to  the  political  deadness  of  the  mod- 
ern South — that  stamping  ground  of  politicians  without 
policies — to  understand  the  vigorous  public  life  in  the 
lower  South  before  it  was  blasted,  once  for  all,  by  the 
slavery  issue.  Mississippi  was  for  some  years  evenly  divided 
between  the  Whig  and  Democratic  parties,  and  in  Sargent 
Prentiss,  John  A.  Quitman,  Robert  J.  Walker,  Henry  S. 
Foote,  A.  G.  Brown  and  Jacob  Thompson  the  state  boasted 
a  group  of  politicians  second  to  none  in  the  country  if  it 
did  not  actually  surpass  any  other.  Thus  it  was  a  notable 
company  that  Jefferson  Davis  joined.  Mississippi,  politi- 
cally, followed  the  line  of  division  throughout  the  South: 
the  large  slaveholders,  the  aristocrats,  were  mostly  Whigs; 
the  small  farmers,  Democrats.  Now,  Jefferson  Davis  was 
a  Democrat  and  at  the  same  time  a  prosperous  planter; 
moreover,  he  was  a  Democrat  in  a  largely  Whig  section. 
For  these  reasons  his  entry  into  politics  attracted  attention. 

The  period  was  one  of  recovery  after  the  panic  of  1837. 
Mississippi  had  sold  bonds  in  large  quantities  in  order  to 
build  railroads  and  presently  found  itself  confronted  by 
the  choice  of  levying  heavy  taxes  to  pay  interest  or  of  repudi- 
ating the  debt.  The  Democratic  state  government  took  the 
easier  way,  in  spite  of  Whig  opposition,  and  Mississippi  was 
dishonored.    Jefferson  Davis  strongly  urged  payment  and 


38  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

recommended  himself  to  the  Whigs  by  his  stand  for  honesty: 
tnere  can  be  no  doubt  of  his  record.  Nevertheless,  the 
United  States  government,  years  later,  sent  Robert  J. 
Walker  to  Europe  for  the  purpose  of  representing  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  Confederacy  in  the  money  marts  of  the  world  as 
a  repudiator,  much  to  his  injury.  Even  after  the  war,  the 
slander  was  cast  in  his  teeth.  Davis  met  it  with  proud 
silence,  wisely  leaving  his  vindication  to  history.  That  vin- 
dication has  been  complete. 

In  1843,  Jefferson  Davis  made  his  first  stand  for  office, 
running  for  the  legislature  against  Sargent  Prentiss,  who 
was  probably  second  only  to  Webster  as  an  orator.  Prentiss 
beat  the  newcomer,  as  was  to  be  expected,  and  yet  Davis 
made  an  auspicious  beginning,  for  in  a  joint  debate  with 
Prentiss  at  Vicksburg  he  held  his  own.1  The  next  year, 
1844,  Davis  stumped  his  state  as  a  Polk  elector.  Already 
he  was  a  fine  speaker — a  debater  rather  than  orator,  though 
at  first  he  somewhat  affected  the  florid  fashion  of  the  hour. 
This  mood  passed;  and  it  is  notable  that  in  an  age  of  silver- 
tongued  eloquence  he  developed  into  a  master  of  argument. 
Not  particularly  ready  in  extemporaneous  discussion,  he  was 
admirable  when  given  time  for  preparation,  and  on  the  floor 
of  the  Senate  he  held  his  own  against  all  comers. 

Jefferson  Davis  entered  office  in  1845  as  a  member  of 
the  House  of  Representatives:  he  was  elected  as  a  congress- 
man-at-large.  His  career  in  Congress  was  interrupted  by 
the  Mexican  War,  in  which  he  took  part.  In  this  first 
brief  experience  as  a  member  of  a  legislative  body  he  gave 
considerable  promise. 

The  same  year,  1845,  was  notable  in  the  life  of  Jeffer- 
son Davis  in  another  way.    It  seemed  that  the  man,  crushed 

1W.  E.  Dodd,  Jefferson  Davis,  65. 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  39 

in  spirit  by  the  death  of  his  wife  and  ruined  in  health 
by  malaria,  revived  his  hopes  of  happiness  at  the  same 
moment  on  which  he  entered  on  his  career.  He  married  a 
second  wife,  Varina  Anne  Howell,  the  daughter  of  a  rich 
Mississippi  planter. 

Like  so  many  other  lower  Southerners,  the  Howells  had 
come  from  the  North.  They  had  acquired  a  fine  plantation 
and  ranked  with  the  most  cultivated  people  of  a  state 
that  did  not  lack  culture,  becoming  thoroughly  assimilated. 
At  the  same  time,  they  retained  some  of  their  original 
Northern  traits.  Thus,  the  women  of  the  family  seem  to 
have  been  good  cooks  and  housekeepers  at  a  time  when 
Southern  ladies  usually  did  not  do  much  work. 

Varina  Anne  Howell  was  attractive  in  looks  and  clever. 
Unlike  her  husband,  who  was  through  life  thin  and  unrobust, 
she  was  strong  and  full-blooded:  Pollard  calls  her  "brawny." 
She  was  rather  handsome,  though  her  features  were  slightly 
marred  by  a  thick  upper  lip  which  gave  her,  unjustly,  a  slight 
suggestion  of  cruelty.  It  was  a  smooth,  proud,  comely  face. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Varina  Davis  was  a  congenial 
companion  for  an  intellectual  man  and  that  she  secured  a 
considerable  influence  over  her  husband,  even  possibly  in 
political  matters.  Her  abounding  vitality  would  have  made 
her  predominant  over  the  semi-invalid  Davis  but  for  a  will 
which  always  kept  him  master  of  himself.  He  was  not  to 
be  put  in  leading  strings  by  anyone. 

Jefferson  Davis,  by  his  second  wife,  had  a  number  of 
children,  all  but  two  of  whom  died  before  maturity.  Both 
were  girls  and  only  one  left  descendants.  As  in  the  case  of 
so  many  other  men  who  have  occupied  great  positions,  Jeffer- 
son Davis  left  no  one  to  bear  a  name  immortalized  in  history. 


IV 

MEXICO 

THAT  truly  Nordic  spirit,  James  K.  Polk,  immediately 
on  his  inauguration  went  to  work  to  attempt  to  redeem 
his  expansionist  pledges.  Texas  had  been  admitted  to  the 
Union,  by  joint  resolution  of  Congress,  before  Polk's  ad- 
vent, but  the  question  of  the  Texan  boundary  remained 
unsettled  and  Oregon  loomed  up  as  a  vast  and  threatening 
problem. 

There  was  danger  of  war  with  Mexico  over  the  Texan 
boundary  and  with  England  over  the  division  of  Oregon. 
A  compromise  was  made  with  England  in  the  case  of  Ore- 
gon by  which  the  United  States  renounced  "Fifty-Four 
Forty  or  Fight"  and  accepted  Forty-Nine  and  Peace.  The 
Mexican  question  was  not  compromised.  Texas  claimed  the 
Rio  Grande  as  the  boundary,  and  when  Mexico  refused  to 
admit  this  war  resulted.  Polk  had  no  desire  for  war,  but 
he  was  no  diplomatist  and  Mexico  was  stupidly  truculent, 
with  the  truculence  of  a  weaker  race  laboring  under  a  sense 
of  injustice. 

Fighting  began  when  American  troops  advanced  to  the 
Rio  Grande.  Calhoun,  who  as  Secretary  of  State  had  la- 
bored to  acquire  Texas  without  war,  denounced  this  forward 
movement  of  the  government,  but  for  once  his  disciples  de- 
serted him.  His  principal  lieutenants  in  Congress  were 
Robert  Barnwell  Rhett  of  South  Carolina  and  William  L. 

40 


MEXICO  41 

Yancey  of  Alabama.  These  younger  men  favored  war  in 
1846  as  ardently  as  Calhoun  himself  had  in  181 2.  So  did 
the  Western  and  many  of  the  Northern  Democrats.  Stephen 
A.  Douglas,  the  rising  young  Western  Democratic  leader,  ad- 
vocated war  along  with  the  Southern  fire-eaters.  Jefferson 
Davis,  who  had  strongly  favored  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
supported  the  administration  in  its  war  policy.  The  Whigs, 
Northern  and  Southern,  joined  Calhoun  in  opposing  it. 

The  stand  of  Calhoun  against  the  Mexican  War  is  note- 
worthy, for  it  has  been  the  fashion  of  historians  to  ascribe 
that  war  to  the  aggression  of  the  Slave  Power  on  a  weaker 
nation,  and  Calhoun  was  the  leader  of  the  Slave  Power,  so 
called.  The  Mexican  War  was  really  the  result  of  the  Nordic 
thirst  for  conquest;  and  Nordics — Northern,  Western  and 
Southern — favored  it.  The  adventurous  and  aspiring  portion 
of  the  people  of  all  sections  except  New  England  demanded 
expansion  into  the  mysterious  and  mainly  unoccupied  South- 
west. Yet  the  strongest  force,  undoubtedly,  was  that  of  the 
lower  South  reaching  out  toward  the  tropics.  Calhoun  rep- 
resented the  agricultural  South  battling  against  the  industrial 
North:  he  did  not  represent  the  new  spirit  of  the  lower 
South,  intent  on  fulfilling  its  destiny  even  at  the  price  of 
separation  from  the  North.  For  this  reason  Calhoun  found 
himself  isolated  in  the  last  years  of  his  career:  the  lower 
South  had  gone  beyond  him. 

The  historians,  in  their  desire  to  make  out  a  case  against 
the  United  States — for  the  historians  represent  the  Northern 
fear  of  the  Southern  extension  into  the  tropics — have  given 
the  impression  that  Mexico  was  a  civilized  nation.  It  could 
be  called  so  only  by  courtesy.  The  mass  of  the -inhabitants 
were  Indians  not  much  farther  advanced  in  civilization  than 
their  Aztec  ancestors.    It  is  true  that  Mexico  had  abolished 


42  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

slavery,  and  this  was  hailed  by  the  North  as  a  proof  of 
advanced  collective  morality;  but  emancipation,  so  far  from 
benefiting  the  country,  had  actually  injured  it,  for  a  once 
useful  class  of  workers  had  become  idlers.  Peonage  took  the 
place  of  slavery  and  was,  in  some  respects,  worse,  as  it 
conferred  the  name  of  freedom  without  the  reality.  Yet 
if  it  had  not  been  for  peonage,  Mexico  would  have  frankly 
relapsed  into  barbarism.  It  styled  itself  a  republic,  save  at 
such  times  as  it  happened  to  be  an  empire,  and  it  had 
adopted  one  admirable  paper  constitution  after  another;  but 
in  reality  it  was  in  a  condition  of  chronic  anarchy  except 
for  brief  periods  when  some  bandit  or  military  adventurer 
was  able  to  make  himself  autocrat.  There  was  no  particular 
reason  why  the  United  States  should  hesitate  to  extend  its 
sway  over  the  country  between  the  Nueces  and  the  Rio 
Grande  on  account  of  the  claims  of  sovereignty  of  a  country 
so  disorganized,  feeble  and  distracted  as  Mexico.  Naturally, 
it  preferred  to  back  Texas.  To  be  weak  is  to  be  wrong 
— and  justly  so:  otherwise  there  would  be  no  virtue  in  being 
strong.  Yet  it  is  probable  that  if  Calhoun  had  continued 
in  the  State  Department  under  Polk  the  territory  in  dis- 
pute would  have  been  gained  without  war,  for  Calhoun  was 
almost  the  only  great  diplomat  the  United  States  has  pro- 
duced. Polk  and  Buchanan  could  not  bend  his  bow,  and 
because  they  could  not  the  Mexican  War  occurred. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Jefferson  Davis  should  take  part 
in  the  war.  He  had  supported  Polk's  policy  in  spite  of 
Calhoun,  and,  besides,  his  education  and  ambition  called 
him  to  the  field.  His  first  love,  military  ambition,  had  given 
way  to  politics  in  the  long  interval  of  peace,  but  it  now 
revived.  Davis,  resigning  his  seat  in  Congress,  went  back 
to  Mississippi  to  offer  his  services.    He  was  elected  colonel 


MEXICO  43 

of  the  first  regiment  raised  in  that  state  for  the  war,  known 
as  the  "Rifles." 

It  was  Jefferson  Davis's  fate  to  be  attached  to  the  army 
commanded  by  his  father-in-law,  Zachary  Taylor.  The  lat- 
ter was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  generals.  He  had 
been  trained  in  fighting  Indians  on  the  frontier  and  was  a 
practical  soldier,  not  theoretical.  Dirty  in  person,  unedu- 
cated, eccentric,  he  was  yet  a  great  natural  leader  of  men 
and  exceedingly  popular  with  his  soldiers.  He  blundered 
into  victories  in  an  amazing  way,  and  all  of  his  battles  were 
victories.  In  most  respects  he  was  the  reverse  of  Jeffer- 
son Davis,  which  possibly  explains  his  objection  to  the  latter 
as  a  son-in-law.  Rough  and  practical,  Taylor  had  a  natural 
distaste  for  West  Point  fastidiousness  and  airiness,  which 
Davis  exemplified  in  early  life.  Now  that  he  had  lost  some 
of  his  West  Pointism  by  planting  and  politics,  Taylor  found 
him  much  more  to  his  liking  and  actually  grew  fond  of  him. 

Jefferson  Davis  showed  considerable  initiative  as  a  sol- 
dier in  the  Mexican  War.  While  the  rest  of  the  army  con- 
tinued to  rely  on  "Brown  Bess,"  he  put  a  new  rifle  in  his 
regiment  which  increased  its  efficiency.  It  was  a  superb 
regiment,  composed  chiefly  of  well-to-do  planters,  who  were 
accompanied  by  their  own  servants.  About  September  i, 
1846,  the  command  reached  the  front  in  Mexico  and  soon 
saw  service.  Taylor  attacked  the  town  of  Monterey,  held 
by  a  large  force  of  Mexicans.  Davis  and  the  Rifles  played 
a  conspicuous  part  in  the  storming  of  the  enemy's  works. 
The  Mexicans  at  length  withdrew  from  Monterey,  leaving 
the  victory  with  Taylor. 

For  some  time  afterward  he  was  kept  inactive  for  want  of 
troops.  Early  in  1847,  however,  he  was  reenforced  and  re- 
sumed his  advance.    Santa  Anna,  the  Mexican  president  and 


44  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

army  commander,  a  rather  scatter-brained  adventurer  in 
gaudy  uniform,  suddenly  moved  northward  against  Taylor 
with  a  considerable  army.  The  two  forces  met  at  Buena 
Vista,  where  the  most  spirited  action  <of  the  war  took  place. 
The  Mexicans  were  in  such  superior  force  that  for  once 
they  had  a  chance  to  win. 

The  Americans  held  a  position  along  the  edge  of  a  series 
of  deep  ravines  at  the  base  of  a  mountain.  The  Mexicans, 
charging,  occupied  this  mountain  before  the  Americans, 
thus  gaining  the  initial  advantage.  They  then  sought  to 
get  in  the  rear  of  the  Americans  by  an  attack  on  their 
wings  beyond  the  ends  of  the  ravines.  It  was  like  a  battle 
in  a  picture  book.  Against  the  background  of  the  cactus- 
covered  desert,  under  the  brilliant  sunshine  of  Mexico,  stood 
the  somber  and  immobile  line  of  American  riflemen,  mostly 
in  frontier  garb.  In  front  stretched  dense  masses  of  Mexi- 
can infantry  and  close  squadrons  of  cavalry,  clad  in  bright 
uniforms  of  every  hue— green,  yellow,  crimson,  blue — while 
the  wind  brought  to  the  invaders  the  music  of  the  Mexican 
bands,  made  hauntingly  sweet  by  distance.1 

For  some  time  the  battle  was  hotly  fought.  The  Mexi- 
cans pressed  the  Americans  hard  on  the  left  wing,  though 
the  American  artillery,  admirably  handled,  told  terribly  on 
the  massed  assailants.  At  the  point  held  by  the  Mississippi 
Rifles,  the  Mexican  cavalry  attempted  a  flanking  movement 
up  one  of  the  ravines.  Davis,  throwing  out  his  regiment 
around  the  end  of  the  ravine  in  the  form  of  an  obtuse  angle, 
poured  a  converging  fire  into  the  column  of  approaching 
horsemen.  In  a  moment  the  ravine  was  choked  with  dying 
men  and  beasts:  the  charge  was  broken  with  dramatic  sud- 
denness.   The  most  serious  fighting  of  the  day,  however, 

1  Justin  H.  Smith,  The  War  with  Mexico,  i,  389. 


MEXICO  45 

occurred  on  the  right  wing,  where  the  Americans  were  like- 
wise successful.  The  battle  ended  with  the  repulse  of  the 
Mexicans  at  every  point. 

The  defeat  of  the  cavalry  charge  was  a  spectacular  feat, 
as  a  result  of  which  fame  came  to  Jefferson  Davis.  He  was 
regarded  as  a  soldier  genius,  second  only  to  Taylor  and  Scott. 
Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  his  actual  battle  experience  was 
limited  to  Monterey  and  Buena  Vista.  That  he  did  well 
is  undeniable,  but  no  man  can  demonstrate  great  military 
ability  as  a  regimental  commander  in  two  small  engagements. 
The  main  exploit  of  the  war  was  Scott's  march  to  Mexico 
City,  and  the  officer  who  did  the  best  work  in  this  was 
Robert  E.  Lee,  Scott's  chief  engineer.  But  Lee  had  no 
such  dramatic  experience  as  the  stand  at  Buena  Vista,  and 
the  crowd  judges  men  largely  by  dramatic  incidents.  Thus 
Jefferson  Davis  returned  from  the  war  with  a  reputation 
that  was  perhaps  somewhat  exaggerated.  The  applause  was 
so  great  that  he  was  deceived  himself.  He  was  looked  on 
in  the  South  as  a  great  soldier  and  he  was  firmly  convinced  of 
his  own  military  talents.  His  war  service  was  destined  to 
be  decisive  of  his  future.  It  put  him  in  the  Senate  and 
made  him  President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  When 
the  Richmond  Examiner  near  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  said, 
"If  we  are  to  perish,  the  verdict  of  posterity  will  be,  Died 
of  a  V,"  x  it  was  commenting  bitterly  on  the  consequences 
that  had  flowed  from  the  famous  obtuse  angle  of  Buena 
Vista. 

As  might  be  expected,  Davis  was  crowned  at  home  with 
laurels.  He  was  an  interesting  hero,  too,  for  he  limped  on 
a  crutch,  the  result  of  a  wound  in  the  foot  received  at  Buena 
Vista.    Prentiss,  his  sometime  rival,  eulogized  him  with  his 

1  January  9,  1865. 


46  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

matchless  rhetoric,  and  the  Rifles  were  toasted  from  one 
end  of  the  state  to  the  other.  It  was  an  hour  of  triumph 
undarkened  by  any  premonitions  of  the  future. 

Davis  soon  experienced  the  political  benefits  of  military 
glory.  In  his  brief  career  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
he  had  been  promising,  but  nothing  more.  Yet  now,  as  a 
result  of  Buena  Vista,  the  governor  of  Mississippi  appointed 
Jefferson  Davis  to  fill  an  unexpired  term  in  the  Senate,  and 
the  legislature  presently  elected  him  for  six  years.  Thus 
he  gained  a  political  promotion  that  would,  otherwise,  have 
probably  come  only  after  years  of  service.  In  a  sense  this 
rapid  rise  was  a  misfortune.  Up  to  the  great  hour  of  his 
life,  fate  was  very  kind  to  Jefferson  Davis.  On  leaving 
the  army,  he  found  a  plantation  awaiting  him.  Entering 
politics  in  1843  as  tne  merest  amateur,  he  was  a  senator 
in  1847.  Reentering  the  army  in  1846,  he  speedily  became 
one  of  the  country's  most  famous  soldiers.  When  he  left 
the  Senate,  he  was  given  a  place  in  the  cabinet.  Every 
step  was  upward,  to  better  things.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at,  then,  that  Davis  gained  a  self-confidence  that  was  as 
much  the  fruit  of  good  fortune  as  of  merit.  Merit  there  was, 
and  much  merit,  but  men  as  meritorious  as  he  have  fared  far 
worse.  He  would  have  been  a  greater  man  if  he  had  had 
to  win  his  way  by  hard  knocks,  as  Lincoln  did.  He  had  too 
much  success  and  praise.  Naturally,  he  came  to  overesti- 
mate his  powers.  Successful  men  are  always  willing  to  be- 
lieve that  success  is  the  test  of  merit. 

Jefferson  Davis  took  his  place  in  the  Senate  at  the  be- 
ginning of  a  period.  The  great  figures,  Webster,  Clay  and 
Calhoun,  were  nearing  the  end:  the  men  of  the  Civil  War 
were  coming  on  the  scene.  The  Senate,  however,  was  still 
a  dignified  institution  where  the  older  members  wore  black 


MEXICO  47 

shorts  and  silk  stockings  and  where  the  auditors  in  the  gal- 
lery still  listened  to  ponderous  eloquence  in  naive  admiration. 
Modern  irreverence  had  not  yet  touched  the  Senate. 

By  this  time  the  fighting  in  Mexico  was  over;  the  more 
troublesome  and  dangerous  matter  of  peace  terms  occupied 
the  stage.  The  opportunity  was  so  great  that  the  bolder 
spirits  were  prepared  to  grasp  it.  Mexico  had  fallen  at  a 
blow,  like  a  hollow  image.  Its  entire  absorption  was  prac- 
ticable. Understanding  this,  the  great  expansionist,  Robert 
J.  Walker,  was  urging  its  annexation.  He  wanted  the  entire 
country  and  he  won  over  to  his  views  James  Buchanan, 
Secretary  of  State.  In  January,  1848,  the  acquisition  of 
all  Mexico  seemed  pretty  well  assured.1 

Yet  the  scheme  failed.  Why?  Why  did  the  Southern 
expansionists,  eager  as  they  were  to  push  into  the  tropics, 
fail  to  support  Walker  at  this  favorable  moment  and  for- 
bear to  bring  such  pressure  to  rest  on  Polk  as  he  could  not 
have  resisted?  It  was  one  of  the  great  hours  of  Ameri- 
can history,  but  it  was  allowed  to  pass  unimproved. 

A  new  slavery  controversy  defeated  the  Nordic  grasp  at 
conquest.  The  South  witnessed  with  anger  and  dismay  a 
bold  effort  of  the  North  to  snatch  from  it  the  advantages 
won  by  Southern  initiative  and  Southern  blood.  The  North 
had  done  little  in  the  war;  nearly  all  the  volunteers  had 
been  Westerners  and  Southerners;  the  leading  figures, 
Taylor,  Scott,  Quitman,  Wool,  Worth,  Davis,  were  South- 
erners. It  had  been  a  war  waged  for  Southern  expansion. 
Yet  late  in  1846,  the  Wilmot  Proviso  was  launched  in  Con- 
gress for  the  purpose  of  taking  from  the  South  the  new 
territory  to  be  gained:  the  Proviso  forbade  the  carrying  of 
slaves  into  the  region  acquired  from  Mexico.    The  measure 

1  American  Historical  Review,  5,  493. 


48  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

passed  the  House  of  Representatives  and  even  threatened 
in  the  Senate.  What  would  be  the  use  of  annexation  if  the 
Nordic  and  Southern  institution  of  slavery  was  ruled  out? 

David  Wilmot  was  a  fat  and  commonplace  congressman 
from  Pennsylvania,  but  he  gained  immortality  by  the  audac- 
ity of  his  proposal:  he  was  probably  the  instrument  of 
shrewder  men.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  his  startling  measure 
kept  the  United  States  from  acquiring  Mexico.  At  one 
anaconda  swallow  the  country  might  have  expanded  to 
Central  America.  The  crazy  framework  of  the  Mexican 
state  had  gone  to  pieces  under  the  shock  of  defeat;  the  coun- 
try was  a  welter  of  anarchy  except  where  American  troops 
kept  order,  and  the  upper  classes  of  Mexicans  largely 
favored  annexation.  But  the  government  drew  back  after 
a  promising  beginning,  and  the  Wilmot  Proviso  must  have 
had  something  to  do  with  the  decision.  The  government 
would  be  satisfied  with  a  big  bite:  it  would  not  ask  all. 

At  the  time  the  Southern  politicians  were  more  concerned 
with  the  Wilmot  Proviso  than  with  the  gain  of  Mexico.  The 
Proviso  was  the  first  open  blow  struck  by  the  North  at  the 
South.  It  was  a  declaration  of  war.  Historians  have  de- 
nounced the  South  for  the  part  it  played  in  the  repeal  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise;  but  the  spirit  of  that  compro- 
mise was  first  violated  by  Wilmot  in  his  famous  measure, 
which  aimed  at  keeping  the  South  from  obtaining  any 
further  territory  whatever.    Of  course,  the  South  retaliated. 

The  Missouri  Compromise  was,  on  the  whole,  a  wise 
measure.  It  ran  a  line  through  the  Louisiana  Purchase  and 
gave  all  the  territory  to  the  north  of  the  line  to  the  North 
and  all  to  the  south  of  it  to  the  South.  If  this  compromise 
could  have  continued  in  force  there  might  not  have  been  a 
Civil  War.    But  further  accessions  of  territory  must  come 


MEXICO  49 

from  the  Southwest,  since  the  North  could  not  expand  into 
Canada.  Such  an  expansion  threatened  to  make  the  South 
predominant  in  the  Union;  and  it  was,  in  a  measure,  in  self- 
defense  that  the  North  backed  the  Wilmot  Proviso.  Yet 
the  Proviso  was  a  violation  of  the  principle  of  territorial 
division  recognized  in  the  Missouri  Compromise,  and,  very 
naturally,  the  South  resented  it. 

The  "Wilmot  Proviso  was  the  first  cause  of  the  Civil  War: 
it  denied  the  South  an  equal  place  and  an  equal  opportunity 
in  the  Union.  At  the  same  time  it  was  necessary  for  the 
North  to  take  this  step.  If  the  South  had  acquired  all 
of  Mexico,  which  was  most  probable  at  one  time,  the  North 
would  have  been  overbalanced  by  the  tropic  Nordics:  the 
wealth  and  the  power  would  have  been  with  the  South  despite 
the  immense  non-Nordic  immigration  pouring  into  the  North. 
The  European  civilization  and  industrial  development  of 
the  North  would  have  been  imperiled  by  one  of  the  greatest 
and  most  fascinating  experiments  that  human  history  would 
have  known — that  of  the  tropical  empire  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Nordics. 

Walker's  dream  faded:  the  empire  was  not  to  be.  The 
actual  frustration  of  the  expansionist  plans  came  about  in 
a  peculiar  way.  Polk  was  uneasy  and  undecided.  Nicholas 
Trist,  envoy  accompanying  Scott's  army,  took  it  on  himself 
to  make  a  treaty  of  peace  with  certain  Mexicans  claiming 
to  be  in  authority,  though  there  was  no  Mexican  govern- 
ment at  the  moment.  Polk,  who  had  given  Trist  no  power 
to  commit  the  government,  was  astonished  at  the  news. 
Buchanan  and  Walker  urged  him  to  reject  the  treaty.  But 
Polk  was  glad  to  find  a  way  out  of  Mexico,  with  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  distracting  the  country;  and  he  confirmed  the 
agreement.     Mexico  was  lost.     It  did  not  go  unsheared, 


50  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

however.  California,  New  Mexico,  Arizona,  Nevada  and 
Utah  were  the  fruits  of  the  war. 

In  the  debates  that  went  on  in  Congress  over  the 
Mexican  settlement,  Jefferson  Davis  showed  himself  an 
ardent  expansionist,  though  he  supported  the  administra- 
tion when  it  decided  on  moderate  acquisitions.  He  defended 
Polk  against  the  assaults  of  Webster  and  Calhoun  alike.  He 
had  a  clear  understanding  of  the  possibilities  of  the  new 
possession  and  immediately  began  to  urge  the  building  of  a 
railroad  to  link  the  East  and  the  South  to  the  far  South- 
west. This  was  the  pet  scheme  of  his  life.  He  failed  in 
this,  as  in  all  the  other  large  measures  he  advocated,  and 
in  no  small  degree  because  of  his  limitations.  Yet  in  1848, 
Jefferson  Davis  had  no  prevision  of  secession.  He  was  a 
nationalist  and  expansionist,  though  an  ardent  Southerner. 
He  looked  to  a  greater  Union,  in  which  the  South  would 
retain  its  prestige  and  leadership.  This  means  that  he  mis- 
understood the  forces  that  underlay  American  life,  for  there 
could  be  no  compromise  between  the  developing  Nordic 
tropicalism  of  the  South  and  the  modern  Europeanism  of 
the  North.  There  could  be  only  a  truce  preceding  a  fight 
to  the  finish.  Yet  it  is,  perhaps,  a  credit  to  Davis's  heart 
if  not  to  his  head  that,  unlike  some  other  Southerners,  he 
did  not  foresee  the  inevitability  of  secession  and  war. 

This  year  of  the  peace  treaty,  1848,  is  a  turning  point  in 
American  history.  It  definitely  marks  the  division  of  the 
republic  into  different  camps.  Before  this  time  men  had 
thought  of  the  United  States  as  a  whole;  after  this  they 
began  to  think  of  it  as  the  North  and  the  South — hostile 
twins  bound  together  by  that  ligament  of  flesh,  the  Constitu- 
tion. From  now  on  the  North  fought  to  prevent  the  ex- 
tension of  slavery — that  is,  the  expansion  of  the  Nordic 


MEXICO  51 

South — while  the  South,  in  turn,  opposed  the  admission  of 
new  free-labor  states. 

The  first  fight  between  the  sections  after  the  opening 
struggle  over  the  Wilmot  Proviso  turned  on  the  organization 
of  Oregon  as  a  territory  with  prohibition  of  slavery.  The 
South  opposed  the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  Oregon,  though 
it  had  no  hope  of  turning  this  far-away  region  into  planter 
territory.    It  was  simply  retaliating  for  the  Wilmot  Proviso. 

Jefferson  Davis  ardently  sided  with  his  colleagues  of  the 
lower  South  on  Oregon.  He  was  actuated  by  something  more 
than  the  mere  spirit  of  opposition.  He  wished  to  make  a 
trade,  permitting  Oregon  to  be  organized  as  a  free-labor 
territory  in  return  for  the  continuance  of  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise line  from  the  western  boundary  of  the  Louisiana 
Purchase  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  Louisiana  Purchase 
ended  at  the  verge  of  what  had  been  Mexican  territory — 
Utah,  Nevada,  California. 

This  was  a  far-seeing  and  statesmanlike  move,  because 
the  extension  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  to  the  Pacific 
— the  definite  dedication  of  all  territory  gained  to  the  south 
of  the  line  to  the  planter  system — would  have  paved  the  way 
for  vast  accessions.  Unfortunately  for  Davis,  however,  the 
Northerners  saw  as  readily  as  himself  the  implications  of 
such  a  concession.  His  attempt  to  force  a  new  compromise 
over  Oregon  failed.  The  dominion  was  organized  as  a  ter- 
ritory with  prohibition  of  slavery. 

Oregon  had  stirred  up  much  bitterness.  The  conflicts 
in  Congress  were  becoming  increasingly  obstinate  and 
violent.  The  ancient  decorum  of  the  Senate  was  vanishing. 
Bills  came  up  providing  for  the  organization  of  California 
and  New  Mexico  as  territories  without  any  reference  to 
slavery.    They  did  not  pass,  for  this  matter  of  the  prohibi- 


52  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

tion  or  permission  of  slavery  in  the  territories  had  become  the 
overshadowing  issue.  A  political  crisis  was  coming  on  the 
country  more  dangerous  even  than  that  settled  by  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  or  by  Clay's  compromise  tariff  of  1833. 

The  South  was  beginning  to  disbelieve  in  the  finality  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  since  the  Wilmot  Proviso  was 
a  refusal  to  extend  the  principle  of  that  compromise  to  cover 
the  situation  created  by  the  accession  of  Mexican  territory. 
The  South  no  longer  valued  a  measure  which  no  longer 
protected  it.  Robert  Barnwell  Rhett  had  advanced  an  opin- 
ion, sponsored  by  his  master,  Calhoun,  that  Congress  had 
no  right  to  prohibit  slavery  in  any  of  the  territories  and, 
consequently,  that  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  unconsti- 
tutional.1 Jefferson  Davis  and  other  Southerners  were  ad- 
vancing toward  this  position.  On  the  other  hand,  the  North 
more  and  more  inclined  toward  a  definite  prohibition  of 
slavery  in  all  the  territories.  North  and  South  were  draw- 
ing so  far  apart  that  the  older  politicians,  who  loved  the 
Union,  became  alarmed.  Lewis  Cass,  one  of  the  few  Ameri- 
cans of  the  time  who  still  looked  on  the  country  as  a  whole 
and  so  could  not  be  called  a  Northerner  or  a  Southerner, 
originated  the  famous  doctrine  of  "squatter  sovereignty," 
usually  attributed  to  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  who  later  used 
it  with  momentous  consequences.  Squatter  sovereignty  was 
distinctly  a  Western  creation,  breathing  as  it  did  intense 
individualism.  It  sought  to  disregard  Congress  and  leave 
the  question  of  admitting  slaves  to  the  territories,  or  pro- 
hibiting them,  to  the  people  of  the  territories  themselves. 
This  was  democracy  with  a  vengeance.  It  opposed  the 
intransigent  theory  of  the  North  that  Congress  must  ex- 
clude slavery  from  all  the  territories  and  the  equally  in- 

1John  W.  Burgess,  The  Middle  Period,  345. 


MEXICO  53 

transigent  theory  of  the  South  that  Congress  must  prevent 
the  exclusion  of  slavery  from  any  of  the  territories.  It  made 
the  slavery  question  local,  instead  of  congressional  and 
national.  Inasmuch,  however,  as  slavery  underlay  the 
southward  expansion  of  the  United  States,  the  question  was 
national,  in  the  largest  sense,  and  could  not  be  settled  by 
such  makeshifts  as  squatter  sovereignty. 

The  North  had  had  its  way  with  Oregon,  but  California 
and  New  Mexico  remained  unorganized,  though  the  former 
dominion,  suddenly  populated  by  gold  hunters,  was  already 
clamoring  for  statehood.  The  situation  steadily  grew  in 
menace.  The  conflict  over  Oregon  had  weakened  the  al- 
liance of  South  and  West,  because  the  West  had  favored 
the  organization  of  Oregon  without  slavery  and  the  South 
had  opposed  it.  Yet  the  alliance  continued  somewhat  longer, 
for  the  West  and  South  still  had  much  in  common.  Im- 
migration, however,  was  fast  taking  the  West  from  the 
South,  for  the  non-Nordic  home-seekers  from  Europe  swarm- 
ing into  the  West  were  affiliated  with  the  industrial  North 
rather  than  with  the  South.  The  Nordic  pioneers,  fur- 
traders  and  Indian  fighters,  who  had  first  settled  the  West 
and  naturally  preferred  the  South,  were  being  overborne 
by  the  newcomers. 

What  had  held  the  sections  of  the  republic  together  so 
long  was  common  party  allegiance:  Northern  Democrats  had 
usually  been  able  to  find  a  meeting  ground  with  Southern 
Democrats,  while  Northern  and  Southern  Whigs  affiliated. 
But  in  the  year  1848,  for  the  first  time,  sectionalism  overrode 
party  allegiance,  a  precursor  of  the  break-up  of  the  Union. 

The  Democrats  nominated  the  leading  man  of  the  West, 
Lewis  Cass,  a  prominent  party  leader  and  a  great  patriot. 
The  Whigs  put  up  the  war  hero,  Zachary  Taylor,  simply  be- 


54  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

cause  of  his  military  record.  Taylor  happened  to  be  a 
Louisiana  slaveholder;  and  several  of  the  Southern  states, 
normally  Democratic  by  small  majorities,  went  for  him,  as 
much  because  he  was  a  slaveholder  as  because  he  was  a 
hero.  By  this  defection,  Cass  was  defeated.  The  Western 
and  Northern  Democrats  never  forgave  the  South,  and  the 
alliance  between  West  and  South  thus  received  another  blow. 
It  was  now  very  near  the  end,  but  it  was  to  last  a  few 
years  longer  and  bring  about  one  of  the  most  dramatic 
crises  in  American  history. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM 

THE  Wilmot  Proviso  and  the  fight  over  the  organiza- 
tion of  Oregon  were  symptoms  of  an  impending  storm 
in  politics  of  the  first  magnitude.  It  was  evident  that  things 
could  not  continue  as  they  were,  for  every  time  that 
the  question  of  organizing  a  territory  or  admitting  a  state 
came  up  in  Congress  a  most  bitter,  stubborn  and  dangerous 
conflict  followed.  The  matter  of  the  territories  was  rend- 
ing the  Union  to  pieces.  Unless  some  remedy  was  found, 
the  political  machinery  would  cease  to  function. 

What  was  to  be  done?  The  question  was  asked  by  every 
politician  and  answered  in  several  ways.  A  compromise  was 
overwhelmingly  demanded,  but  could  still  another  compro- 
mise be  made?  And  if  it  were  possible,  was  it  wise?  Was 
it  wise  for  the  South  to  consent  to  further  concessions? 

The  politicians  of  the  border  states  were  almost  over- 
whelmingly for  compromise.  Those  of  the  North  and  of 
the  lower  South  were  much  less  so.  Jefferson  Davis,  who 
had  shown  himself  strongly  Southern  in  the  debates  on  the 
Wilmot  Proviso  and  Oregon,  did  not  favor  compromise.  His 
was  not  a  yielding  nature  and  his  blood  was  up.  He  so 
nearly  approached  the  position  of  the  Southern  extremists  on 
slavery  and  states'  rights  that  he  was  hailed  by  their  leaders, 
Rhett  and  Yancey,  as  a  comrade  and  considered  as  a  possible; 

55 


56  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

candidate  of  the  South  in  the  approaching  presidential  elec- 
tion of  1852. 

The  moment  was  critical,  in  a  sense  the  most  critical 
in  American  politics.  Both  Rhett  and  Yancey  advocated  a 
downright  defiance  of  the  North.  They  were  prepared  to 
go  beyond  Calhoun — indeed,  to  defy  him  if  need  be.  Yancey 
was  the  incarnation  of  the  spirit  of  the  lower  South,  of  the 
tropical  Nordics.  He  was  an  orator  of  great  power,  but  his 
advocacy  of  extreme  measures  arose  rather  from  passion 
than  from  farsightedness.  It  was  altogether  otherwise  with 
Rhett.  He  was  a  statesman  of  penetrating  vision  who  be- 
lieved that  it  would  be  better  for  the  South  to  withdraw 
from  the  Union  than  to  give  way  to  the  North  or  to  make 
another  compromise  on  the  subject  of  slavery  in  the  terri- 
tories. Speaking  in  a  large  historical  sense,  Rhett  was  right. 
The  question  of  slavery,  which  centered  in  itself  all  the  an- 
tagonistic forces  of  American  life — agriculture  and  indus- 
trialism, Nordicism  and  non-Nordicism,  European  civiliza- 
tion and  tropical  empire,  aristocracy  and  democracy — was 
one  that  could  never  be  settled  by  compromise,  and  Rhett 
was  astute  enough  to  see  it.  Being  perfectly  cold-blooded 
and  logical,  he  did  not  shrink  from  the  consequences  of  any 
act  he  considered  necessary;  and  if  war  flowed  from  it, 
why,  let  it  flow.  If  he  had  had  his  way,  the  South  would 
have  refused  to  compromise  in  1850  and  seceded  then  and 
there.  In  the  long  run,  this  would  have  been  the  best  course 
for  the  South,  for  the  South  was  relatively  stronger  and 
the  North  relatively  weaker  than  a  decade  later.  The 
chances  of  war  would  have  favored  the  former  in  1850. 

Rhett  and  Yancey  did  not  think  that  it  could  safely  stay 
in  the  Union.  Jefferson  Davis  himself  seems  to  have 
doubted.    When  unclouded  by  passion,  his  political  judg- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  57 

ment  was  sometimes  very  sound,  though  he  was  capable 
of  making  the  worst  blunders  on  occasions.  At  this  time, 
1850,  he  was  not  sufficiently  excited  and  exasperated  to 
lose  his  poise,  and  he  seems  to  have  thought  that  seces- 
sion might  be  best.  At  least  he  was  in  sympathy  with 
Rhett  and  Yancey. 

Probably  partly  at  his  moving,  Mississippi  called  a  con- 
vention of  the  slave  states  to  meet  in  Nashville  in  June, 
1850.  If  Calhoun  had  been  alive  when  the  body  assembled, 
there  is  no  telling  the  outcome,  but  the  great  leader  died 
in  March,  at  the  critical  moment.  There  was  no  one  who 
could  take  his  place. 

The  call  of  a  Southern  convention  for  June,  1850,  was 
due  to  a  new  and  most  dangerous  congressional  deadlock. 
California  had  applied  for  admission  to  the  Union  with 
a  non-slavery  constitution  and  without  undergoing  ter- 
ritorial probation.  The  North  was  thus  demanding  a  part 
of  the  possessions  acquired  from  Mexico  as  a  non-slavery 
state,  while  still  holding  to  the  Wilmot  Proviso  and  refusing 
to  give  the  South  its  share  of  the  remaining  acquisitions, 
Utah  and  New  Mexico.  The  result  was  that  the  Southern- 
ers in  Congress,  Whigs  and  Democrats,  under  the  leadership 
of  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  united  to  block  the  admission  of 
California  and  all  other  legislation.  It  was  a  new  crisis. 
Calhoun  wrote  at  this  time,  " Disunion  is  the  only  alterna- 
tive that  is  left  us."  *  The  situation  was  so  alarming  that 
Henry  Clay  and  Daniel  Webster,  with  their  followers,  out- 
lined a  plan  of  compromise.  Webster  made  his  great  Sev- 
enth of  March  speech,  in  which  he  abandoned  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  and  held  out  the  olive  branch  to  the  South.  The 
speech  cost  him  his  political  future,  but  it  did  much  to 

1  American  Historical  Review,  27,   247. 


58  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

conciliate  the  South,  where  secession  sentiment  was  rapidly 
spreading.1  Following  this  effort  at  conciliation,  the  various 
provisions  of  the  Compromise  of  1850  were  introduced  in 
Congress  and  supported  by  Clay  with  all  his  matchless 
parliamentary  management. 

Disunion  feeling,  however,  still  continued  to  be  strong 
in  the  South.  In  Mississippi,  Governor  Quitman  and  Jeffer- 
son Davis  worked  strenuously  against  compromise.  Robert 
Barnwell  and  Robert  Barnwell  Rhett  in  South  Carolina; 
William  L.  Yancey  in  Alabama;  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  in  Virginia 
were  the  other  leaders  in  the  movement  for  the  Nashville 
convention,  which  was  frankly  expected  to  consider  the 
question  of  secession.  Nine  Southern  states  elected  dele- 
gates to  the  convention.  North  Carolina  and  Louisiana 
failed  to  do  so,  and  the  border  states,  Maryland,  Kentucky 
and  Missouri,  were  kept  out  of  the  movement  by  the  in- 
fluence of  Clay  and  Benton. 

When  the  convention  met,  the  Compromise  of  1850  was 
practically  a  fait  accompli.  The  Southern  people,  who  had 
no  wish  to  secede  but  who  had  been  driven  to  desperation 
by  the  fear  of  seeing  all  the  territory  taken  from  Mex- 
ico made  into  anti-slavery  states,  gladly  accepted  the  com- 
promise. The  secession  leaders  found  themselves  powerless, 
and  the  Nashville  convention  broke  up  without  accomplish- 
ing anything  whatever.  Rhett  was  so  vexed  that  he  soon 
afterward  gave  up  his  seat  in  the  Senate  and  went  back 
to  managing  his  newspaper,  the  famous  Charleston  Mercury. 
It  was  his  fate  to  be  the  Southern  Cassandra. 

Rhett  was  the  leading  thinker  of  the  South  after  Cal- 
houn, but  he  did  not  have  Calhoun's  mastery  of  men.  He 
was  nothing  of  the  tribune.    He  was  an  aristocrat,  elected 

1  American  Historical  Review,  27,  250. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  59 

to  the  Senate  by  a  state  controlled  by  a  narrow  oligarchy; 
and  too  proud,  too  detached,  too  malign  to  be  the  head  of 
a  popular  movement.  The  South  admired  but  distrusted 
him,  considering  him  wholly  unsafe.  It  would  not  follow 
him,  as  it  had  followed  Calhoun.  Yet  ten  years  later  it 
was  obliged  to  admit  that  he  was  right,  and  it  seceded  ten 
years  after  he  raised  the  disunion  standard.  Hot-headed 
Southerner  is  a  proverb,  but  Rhett  was  anything  but  hot- 
headed. He  was,  in  reality,  a  fanatical  patriot  who  was 
resolved  to  save  the  Nordic,  slavery  South  he  knew  at  any 
price.  His  morality  was  Nietzschean  and  ruthless  and  he 
did  not  shrink  from  war.  His  brutal  honesty  dismayed 
where  he  would  have  liked  to  persuade  and  encourage.  He 
knew  no  arts  of  cajolery.  Able,  strong-willed,  courageous 
as  he  was,  there  was  about  him  too  much  of  the  lord  and 
master  for  a  democratic  republic,  and  for  this  reason  he 
failed,  though  he  was  one  of  the  foremost  minds  of  his 
time.  He  stands  as  the  supreme  type  of  the  tropic  Nordic 
in  politics. 

The  Compromise  of  1850  was  a  marvelous  feat  of  balanc- 
ing that  proves  Henry  Clay  a  genius.  None  but  a  political 
genius  could  have  brought  the  North  and  South  together 
at  such  a  time.  By  using  every  device  known  to  the  art 
of  persuasion  and  the  science  of  politics,  the  Kentucky  states- 
man succeeded  in  getting  through  Congress  measures  that 
ended  the  slavery  crisis  for  the  time  and  seemed,  to  the 
men  of  the  time,  to  be  a  permanent  solution.  In 
brief,  California,  though  it  lay  mostly  below  the  Missouri 
Compromise  line,  was  admitted  without  slavery,  and  the 
slave  trade  was  abolished  in  the  District  of  Columbia. 
Against  these  Northern  gains,  territorial  governments  that 
did  not  prohibit  slavery  were  to  be  set  up  in  Utah  and 


60  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

New  Mexico;  a  Fugitive  Slave  law  was  passed,  and  a  guar- 
antee was  given  of  non-interference  in  the  inter-state  slave 
trade.  The  North  received  the  better  portion,  for  Utah 
and  New  Mexico  were  sand  deserts  and  it  was  exceedingly 
doubtful  that  Congress  had  any  power  to  interfere  in 
the  slave  trade.  All  that  the  South  really  obtained  was 
the  Fugitive  Slave  act,  and  that  was  to  prove  a  Dead  Sea 
apple.  Southerners,  however,  were  willing  to  accept  almost 
any  settlement  that  seemed  to  put  an  end  to  the  inter- 
minable dispute.  The  great  thing  to  them  was  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  principle  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso  by  the  North. 
They  did  not  know  that  the  abandonment  was  only  in 
appearance. 

The  Compromise  of  1850  was  successful  in  so  far  that  it 
deferred  secession  for  ten  years,  by  the  end  of  which  time 
the  North  was  strong  enough  to  put  down  the  South.  It 
did  not  succeed,  however,  even  temporarily,  in  settling  the 
slavery  issue.  No  sooner  was  the  treaty  made  between  the 
sections  than  it  proved  inoperative.  Congress  had  accepted 
the  Fugitive  Slave  act,  but  the  Northern  public  had  not. 
It  aroused  bitter  anger  among  the  abolitionists,  the  more  so 
that  it  was  likely  to  prove  effective.  States  were  not  left 
any  longer  to  practice  abolition  on  a  small  scale  by  protect- 
ing runaway  slaves  from  the  South.  The  strong  arm  of  the 
federal  government  now  reached  out  and  snatched  black 
fugitives  from  altruistic  kidnappers  hurrying  them  to  Can- 
ada. Nevertheless  juries  obstructed  the  return  of  slaves 
to  owners,  and  mobs  resorted  to  violence  to  rescue  them. 
There  was  practically  a  rebellion  in  the  North  against  the 
Fugitive  Slave  act,  and  it  became  null  and  void.  The  net 
result  of  the  Compromise  of  1850  was  that  the  South  got 
nothing. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  61 

Jefferson  Davis  fought  the  compromise  in  the  Senate  with 
all  his  power.  He  opposed  the  Fugitive  Slave  act  on  the 
ground  that  it  violated  states'  rights:  he  declared  that  he 
would  rather  see  Massachusetts  leave  the  Union  than  have 
the  law  executed  within  its  boundaries  by  United  States  sol- 
diers.1 Rhett  agreed  with  him.  In  fact,  the  Fugitive  Slave 
act  was  no  measure  of  the  lower  South,  which  lost  few  run- 
away slaves,  but  of  the  border  states,  which  suffered  the 
loss  of  a  thousand  slaves — that  is,  a  million  dollars — every 
year  by  the  flitting  of  bondmen  across  the  border.  The 
lower  South,  in  making  common  cause  with  the  border  states 
on  this  measure,  sacrificed  much  in  the  hope  of  securing  the 
unity  of  all  the  slave  section.  But  in  this  case,  as  later, 
the  sacrifice  was  in  vain. 

Davis  refused  to  accept  a  compromise  that  gave  the  South 
nothing.  He  saw  clearly  enough  that  no  settlement  could 
be  satisfactory  to  the  South  that  did  not  lay  down  definite 
territorial  limits  between  the  sections.  He  demanded  the 
extension  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  to  the  Pacific, 
which  was  reasonable  enough  on  the  face  of  it,  if  the  North 
desired  a  real  settlement.  He  offered  as  a  substitute  to 
Clay's  measure  to  admit  California  as  a  half  non-slave  and 
half  slave  state,  a  curious  political  device  that  must  have 
led  to  complications  if  it  had  been  tried.  But  the  North 
could  not  afford  to  make  a  real  compromise  on  the  ques- 
tion of  slavery  in  the  territories.  If  it  had  done  so,  it  would 
have  given  the  Southern  Nordics  a  chance  to  build  up  the 
tropical  empire  they  dreamed  of  and  absolutely  to  have  domi- 
nated the  Union.  In  that  case,  Nordicism  would  have  tri- 
umphed over  modernism. 

Clay's  compromise  passed  Congress.     It  was  accepted, 

burgess,  The  Middle  Period,  371. 


62  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

at  least  apparently,  by  the  North  and  the  border  states.  It 
remained  to  be  seen  whether  or  no  the  South  would  acquiesce. 
For  a  time  the  issue  seemed  doubtful,  for  many  of  the 
leaders  opposed  the  compromise.  The  elections,  however, 
in  Georgia  and  Alabama  went  in  favor  of  the  measure.  The 
critical  state,  at  the  moment,  was  Mississippi,  for  if  Missis- 
sippi had  refused  to  endorse  the  Compromise  of  1850  South 
Carolina  would  almost  certainly  have  followed.  As  it  was, 
Virginia  persuaded  South  Carolina  to  remain  quiet.1 

In  Mississippi,  John  A.  Quitman,  that  magnificent  Nordic 
who  had  moved  South  from  New  York  that  he  might  en- 
joy a  more  congenial  environment,  was  the  anti-compromise 
candidate  for  governor.  The  Whigs  nominated  the  leading 
"Unionist"  of  the  state,  Henry  S.  Foote,  who  cherished  a 
lifelong  hatred  for  the  President  of  the  Confederacy.  The 
preservation  of  the  Union  was  the  issue.  An  election  on 
the  question  of  holding  a  state  convention  to  pass  on  the 
Compromise  of  1850  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  7,000 
in  favor  of  the  compromise — that  is,  the  convention  move- 
ment was  defeated.  At  this  signal  of  defeat,  Quitman 
dropped  out  of  the  race  for  governor.  The  anti-compro- 
misers were  now  in  a  quandary  for  a  candidate;  but  the 
vacant  place  was  taken  by  Jefferson  Davis,  who  had  all 
along  been  in  sympathy  with  Quitman.  He  resigned  his 
seat  in  the  Senate  to  make  the  fight. 

Davis  could  have  had  but  little  hope  of  success,  for  it 
was  more  and  more  evident  that  the  South  had  accepted 
the  compromise.  Still  he  made  a  most  vigorous  and  elo- 
quent campaign,  and  the  majority  of  7,000  against  the 
convention  was  cut  down  to  little  more  than  1,000  for  Foote 
for  governor.    It  was  a  personal  triumph  if  a  political  defeat. 

1  American  Historical  Review,  27,  248. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  63 

The  secession  movement  was  dead  for  the  time.  The 
Southern  people  demanded  a  trial  for  the  Compromise  of 
1850.  Jefferson  Davis  bowed  to  the  will  of  the  people.  For 
three  years,  from  1848  to  185 1,  he  had  walked  the  path  that 
led  to  secession:  he  had  been  one  of  the  most  belligerent 
of  the  Southern  leaders.  He  had  opposed  concession  because 
he  was  not  by  nature  a  compromiser:  he  was  a  fighter. 
He  believed  that  concessions  would  do  no  good,  that  it 
was  better  to  fight  first  than  last.  And  he  had  been  right. 
Later  events  justified  his  judgment  and  his  position.  But 
the  people  had  decided,  in  no  uncertain  voice,  against  the 
seceders  and  in  favor  of  Clay  and  Foote.  Davis  now  made 
a  deliberate  and  far-reaching  change  of  policy.  Dropping 
entirely  the  idea  of  secession,  he  went  back  to  Calhoun's 
old  plan  of  building  up  the  South  within  the  Union  so  that  it 
would  be  able  to  hold  its  own  and  more. 

In  this  change,  Jefferson  Davis  showed  himself  part  poli- 
tician and  part  average  optimist.  He  was  part  politician 
in  that  he  abandoned  a  position  that  could  lead  to  nothing 
but  the  ending  of  his  career.  Rhett  was  made  of  sterner 
fiber.  He  preferred  to  end  his  career  to  accepting  the  Com- 
promise of  1850,  which  he  rightly  regarded  as  fatal  to 
the  South.  But  Jefferson  Davis  had  neither  the  stark  ideal- 
ism nor  the  sardonic  insight  that  marked  Rhett  as,  in  some 
respects,  the  foremost  public  man  of  his  day.  Davis  was 
a  man  of  deep  patriotism,  kindly  feelings  and  good  inten- 
tions as  well  as  an  ambitious  statesman.  The  general  love 
feast  that  accompanied  the  Compromise  of  1850  somewhat 
deceived  him.  He  became  more  hopeful.  He  began  to  be- 
lieve that  the  South  might  continue  in  the  Union  despite  the 
conflicting  tendencies  of  the  sections.  Consequently,  from 
this  time  he  worked  to  preserve  the  Union,  though  un- 


64  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

consciously  he  did  much  to  bring  about  secession.  What  he 
did  not  see,  as  Rhett  so  clearly  saw,  was  that  the  South  had 
to  submit  to  modernism  or  leave  the  Union;  and  in  his 
efforts  to  save  the  South  while  maintaining  the  Union  he 
only  succeeded  in  making  secession  the  more  inevitable.  No 
man  in  the  country  did  more  to  further  disunion  and  yet 
no  man  in  the  country  strove  more  earnestly  and  con- 
scientiously to  preserve  the  Union.  Indeed,  at  the  end 
Rhett  hated  him  for  a  Unionist.  It  is  just  to  say  that  if 
Jefferson  Davis  had  succeeded  in  his  policy  there  would  have 
been  no  secession  and  no  war. 

For  the  time  he  was  discredited  by  his  opposition  to 
the  Compromise  of  1850.  He  seemed  in  for  a  long  retire- 
ment. He  was  too  important  a  man  to  be  ignored,  however, 
and  too  eager  and  ambitious  to  stay  out  of  affairs.  In  1852, 
Franklin  Pierce  was  nominated  by  the  Democrats  as  a 
Northern  man  in  sympathy  with  the  South.  It  happened 
that  Davis  was  one  of  his  closest  friends.  The  Mississippian 
was  thus  led  to  take  an  active  part  in  the  presidential  cam- 
paign, speaking  in  several  states.  Pierce,  on  his  election, 
offered  him  the  post  of  Secretary  of  War,  which,  after  some 
little  hesitation,  he  accepted.  In  the  same  cabinet,  William 
L.  Marcy  was  Secretary  of  State  and  Caleb  Cushing  Attor- 
ney-General. 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  the 
most  conspicuous  figure  in  the  somewhat  colorless  govern- 
ment of  Franklin  Pierce.  In  a  group  of  intelligent  but 
conventional,  old-fashioned  politicians,  Jefferson  Davis,  a 
leader  of  the  tropic  Nordics,  could  not  fail  to  be  prominent. 
Carl  Schurz  has  left  a  description  of  his  splendid  appear- 
ance at  this  time,  the  zenith,  in  some  ways,  of  his  career. 
He  was,  beyond   doubt,  very  striking — rather   tall,  thin, 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  65 

arrow-straight,  Indian-looking,  with  the  calm,  powerful, 
confident  face  of  a  master  of  many  slaves.  Few  American 
public  men  have  ever  had  a  finer  presence. 

He  was  happy  as  Secretary  of  War.  He  loved  the  theory 
of  war,  if  not  the  practice,  and  he  was  a  good  administrator 
— possibly  one  of  the  best  war  ministers  we  have  had.  That 
post  usually  falls  to  tired  politicians  without  military  knowl- 
edge or  military  ambitions.  Jefferson  Davis  was  a  trained 
soldier  and  something  of  an  enthusiast.  He  had  largely  re- 
covered from  the  malaria  that  had  so  injured  his  health; 
he  was  not  worn  out,  as  he  was  in  1861,  by  the  emotional 
strain  of  a  long  and  bitter  conflict.  He  was  hopeful,  think- 
ing that  things  might  come  right,  after  all,  and  that  the 
South  could  live  in  the  Union  without  sacrificing  its  self- 
respect.  So  he  went  to  work  with  a  vim  that  impressed 
every  one. 

He  improved  and  enlarged  the  army,  introduced  new 
weapons,  experimented  with  camels  as  a  means  of  desert 
transport,  and  found  time  to  complete  the  Capitol  and  do 
other  odd  jobs. 

The  experience  was  profitable  in  some  ways;  less  for- 
tunate, perhaps,  in  others.  Jefferson  Davis  became  imbued 
somewhat  with  the  routine  spirit;  he  fell  into  the  habit 
of  details.  When  he  was  elected  President  of  the  South, 
with  a  great  war  on  his  hands,  his  old  war  office  ways  as- 
serted themselves,  and  he  gave  an  amount  of  attention 
to  military  details  that  he  could  ill  afford.  All  in  all, 
his  career  as  Secretary  of  War  probably  did  not  help  to 
prepare  him  for  the  supreme  effort  of  his  life.1 

As  a  politician,  this  was  Jefferson  Davis's  great  hour.  In 
a  mediocre  cabinet  a  man  of  such  force  could  not  but  as- 

*J.  B.  Jones,  A  Rebel  War  Clerk's  Diary,  2,  320 


66  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

sert  himself,  and  the  Mississippian  grew  to  be  the  dominant 
personality  of  the  administration.  He  used  his  influence 
to  carry  out  his  plan  to  make  the  South  strong  in  the  Union 
by  expansion.  The  shelving  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso  by  the 
Compromise  of  1850  gave  him  a  hope  of  success.  He  did 
not  see  that  the  defeat  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso  was  only  in 
form,  that  it  persisted  in  the  Northern  consciousness  as  a 
demand  that  must  be  maintained  in  some  new  way.  He 
did  not  see  that  Southern  expansion  within  the  Union  was 
impossible,  or  well-nigh  so,  that  the  North  would  not  and 
could  not  suffer  it — that  it  would  endanger  the  North  too 
much.  Perhaps  no  one  in  the  country  at  this  time  but 
Rhett  saw  that  the  South  must  fail  in  its  efforts  and  come  to 
secession  in  the  end. 

Jefferson  Davis  sought  to  extend  the  boundaries  of  the 
republic  in  three  fields:  the  part  of  Mexico  immediately 
south  of  the  United  States,  Cuba  and  Central  America. 
These  were  desirable  acquisitions,  but  it  was  evident  after 
the  storm  over  the  Wilmot  Proviso  that  marvelous  political 
legerdemain  would  be  required  for  success.  Davis  under- 
estimated the  difficulties;  he  committed  himself  to  an  under- 
taking that  even  Clay  himself,  with  all  his  cunning,  could 
hardly  have  achieved. 

Cuba  was  the  main  prize,  and  Davis  laid  his  plot  with 
Cuba  chiefly  in  mind.  It  was  an  elaborate  scheme.  Pierre 
Soule,  an  expansionist,  was  selected  as  minister  to  Spain; 
he  was  to  take  the  leading  part  in  securing  the  Pearl  of 
the  Antilles.  John  Y.  Mason  and  James  Buchanan,  late  Sec- 
retary of  State,  were  sent  to  France  and  England  respectively 
as  accessories.  The  undertaking  was  quite  beyond  the 
powers  of  these  men,  none  of  whom  had  much  knowledge 
of  diplomacy.    But  Jefferson  Davis  himself  never  shone  in 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  67 

diplomacy,  and  he  had  little  acquaintance  with  Europe  and 
with  the  qualifications  needed  for  the  difficult  task  he 
essayed. 

Fate,  however,  played  into  Davis's  hands,  and  but  for 
the  inflexible  opposition  of  the  North  to  any  considerable  ex- 
pansion of  the  South  he  might  have  gained  his  ends.  An 
American  ship,  the  Black  Warrior,  was  seized  by  the  Span- 
ish off  the  Cuban  coast  and  heavily  penalized  for  some  in- 
fraction of  the  tariff  laws.  Soule  at  once  presented  a  de- 
mand for  indemnity  to  the  Spanish  court,  which  refused 
to  reply.  So  far  things  had  gone  well;  the  stage  was  set 
for  intervention  in  Cuba;  and  if  Davis  could  have  com- 
manded the  services  of  our  modern  press,  always  so  bel- 
ligerent, war  with  Spain  would  probably  have  followed. 
As  it  was,  the  situation  was  encouraging. 

The  three  ministers  now  proceeded  to  throw  the  fat 
in  the  fire.  In  October,  1854,  Soule,  Mason  and  Buchanan 
met  at  Ostend,  in  Belgium,  and  perpetrated  the  worst  faux 
pas  in  American  history,  the  Ostend  Manifesto.  This  was 
a  declaration  to  the  world  that  the  United  States  wanted 
Cuba  and  meant  to  have  it  by  hook  or  crook,  either  by 
pocketbook  or  mailed  fist.  Bombshell  diplomacy  is  always 
likely  to  explode  the  wrong  way.  The  manifesto  awakened 
the  indignation  of  Europe,  accustomed  to  the  refinements  of 
rapacity,  at  the  crude  covetousness  of  the  Western  republic. 
It  also  alarmed  the  anti-slavery  North.  Marcy,  in  his  vexa- 
tion, recalled  Soule,  who  had  made  himself  a  European 
laughingstock,  and  accepted  a  settlement  of  the  Black 
Warrior  business.  Cuba  was  dropped  like  a  hot  potato.  Thus 
Jefferson  Davis's  main  expansionist  effort  failed,  and  partly 
because  he  did  not  know,  or  could  not  get,  the  men  needed 
for  a  delicate  mission.    The  failure  was  aggravated  by  an 


68  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

abortive  filibustering  expedition  to  Cuba,  led  by  the  ir- 
repressible Quitman. 

The  second  part  of  the  program  was  more  successful. 
James  Gadsden  obtained  for  the  country,  by  purchase,  what 
is  now  southern  New  Mexico  and  Arizona.  What  was  the 
object  in  securing  this  small  strip  of  desert?  A  deep  plan 
lay  beneath  it.  Jefferson  Davis  was  projecting  a  railroad 
to  the  Pacific,  and  the  Gadsden  Purchase  supplied  the  de- 
sired route. 

Davis's  third  plan  came  within  a  degree  of  success.  It 
was  essayed  by  William  Walker,  the  most  gorgeous  adven- 
turer in  American  history  and  a  man  who  exemplified  the 
Nordic  race  at  its  best.  Landing  in  Nicaragua  with  a  hand- 
ful of  men,  Walker  interfered  in  the  interminable  wars  of 
that  so-called  republic.  He  succeeded  in  making  himself 
dictator,  only  to  be  driven  out  by  a  rising.  He  returned 
and  was  driven  out  once  more.  He  made  still  another  at- 
tempt in  i860  and  was  captured  and  executed.  His  was 
the  saddest  of  premature  ends,  because  he  would  have 
immensely  enjoyed  the  great  war  that  followed  so  hard  on 
his  death.    Joaquin  Miller  has  described  this  brave  spirit: 

A  piercing  eye,  a  princely  air, 
A  presence  like  a  chevalier, 

Half  angel  and  half  Lucifer; 
Sombrero  black,  with  plume  of  snow 

That  swept  his  careless  locks  below. 
Great  Spanish  spurs  with  bells  of  steel 

That  dashed  and  dangled  at  the  heel; 
A  face  of  blended  pride  and  pain, 

Of  mingled  pleading  and  disdain, 
With  shades  of  glory  and  of  grief — 

The  famous  filibuster  chief 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  69 

Stood  front  his  men  among  the  trees 

That  top  the  fierce  Cordilleras, 
With  bent  arm  arched  above  his  brow; — 

Stood  still,  he  stands,  a  picture,  now — 
Long  gazing  down  his  inland  seas. 


Jefferson  Davis  had  shown  imagination  and  energy  in  his 
planning,  but  the  task  was  beyond  his  strength.  Perhaps  it 
was  beyond  the  strength  of  any  man.  Only  by  the  utmost 
adroitness  could  the  South  have  won  Cuba  and  Central 
America,  and  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  adroit.  He  was  too 
proud,  too  open,  too  honest  to  succeed  in  deep-laid  and 
subtle  intrigues.  Yet  his  expansionist  program  was  com- 
mendable; it  was  the  outcome  of  a  natural  and  proper  ambi- 
tion. So  far  the  South  had  sought  to  expand  in  the  region 
of  its  "manifest  destiny."  Its  political  action  had  been  con- 
servative and  self-restrained. 

The  South  now  made  a  mistake,  however,  that  proved  its 
undoing.  It  did  not  do  this  of  its  own  motion,  but  in  the 
effort  to  maintain  the  alliance  with  the  West,  to  which  it 
justly  attached  the  utmost  importance.  Indeed,  everything 
depended  on  the  alliance.  If  it  continued,  the  South  might 
even  succeed  in  its  expansionist  plans  despite  the  bitter  op- 
position of  the  North.  But  the  West-South  entente  had  been 
weakened  by  Cass's  defeat  in  1848,  and  if  the  West  went 
over  to  the  North  the  South  would  be  overwhelmed.  Its 
political  position  would  be  hopeless. 

The  West,  using  this  alliance  for  its  own  ends,  precipi- 
tated the  fiercest  political  struggle  in  American  history.  In 
1854,  the  South  was  still  resentful  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso  and 
still  anxious  to  expand  somewhere.  It  had  become  evident 
by  this  time  that  Utah  and  New  Mexico  were  of  no  use  to 


70  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  section.  Cuba  was  a  hope  rather  than  an  expectation. 
Yet  the  South,  while  it  could  do  nothing  positive,  had  it  in 
its  power  to  prevent  the  organization  of  further  territories 
and  the  admission  of  new  states. 

Now,  the  West  of  the  fifties  was  ready  to  extend  into  the 
great  unorganized  dominion  lying  beyond  Missouri  and 
Iowa,  a  part  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase.  This  was  an  un- 
fenced  prairie  on  which  buffaloes  still  moved  in  herds  and 
painted  Indians  still  fought  with  bows  and  arrows.  The 
time  had  come  to  turn  this  magnificent  natural  park  into 
homesteads.  The  people  of  Iowa  and  Missouri  wished  to 
take  up  land  in  this  region,  as  well  as  thousands  of  immi- 
grants from  Europe.  Back  of  the  organization  of  a  territory 
was  a  plan  to  build  a  railroad  from  St.  Louis  or  Chicago 
to  the  Pacific.  This  was  a  rival  to  Jefferson  Davis's  scheme 
for  a  Charleston-San  Francisco  railway. 

David  A.  Atchison,  senator  from  Missouri,  pressed 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  of  Illinois,  the  leader  of  the  Western 
Democrats,  to  further  the  organization  of  a  territory.  Doug- 
las saw  an  opportunity  to  do  two  things:  to  put  the  West 
under  deep  obligations  to  himself  and  also  to  make  into  law 
what  was  coming  to  be  the  Democratic  interpretation  of  the 
Compromise  of  1850  as  regarded  slavery  in  the  territories. 
This  was  the  doctrine  of  non-interference  with  slavery  in 
the  territories.  The  people  of  Utah  and  New  Mexico  were 
left  to  decide  for  themselves  whether  or  no  they  would  have 
slavery — squatter  sovereignty  in  effect.  It  was  Douglas's 
idea  that  the  people  of  all  the  territories  might  have  the  same 
privilege.  In  this  way  he  would  put  an  end  to  the  fierce 
conflicts  that  arose  in  Congress  every  time  a  territory  was 
organized  as  to  whether  it  should  be  organized  as  free- 
labor  or  slave.     Besides — and  this  was  the  important  con- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  71 

sideration — the  South  would  be  induced  by  the  concession  to 
agree  to  the  organization  of  new  territories  and,  possibly, 
to  the  Pacific  railroad  idea. 

The  main  trouble  with  Douglas's  plan  was  that  it  involved 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  which  expressly 
excluded  slavery  from  the  region  in  question.  But  the 
Missouri  Compromise  had  been  weakened  by  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  and  the  Compromise  of  1850,  the  first  of  which  dis- 
regarded geographical  lines  in  the  settlement  of  slavery 
disputes  and  the  second  of  which  substituted  local  action 
for  congressional  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  Douglas 
thought  that  the  Missouri  Compromise  might  be  set  aside 
on  the  ground  that  it  had  become  obsolete.  He  was  mis- 
taken: political  agreements,  no  matter  how  outworn,  are  too 
useful  to  some  party  or  faction  to  be  overthrown  without 
convulsions. 

Douglas  introduced  a  bill  in  the  Senate  for  the  organiza- 
tion of  a  territory — afterward  changed  to  the  two  territories 
of  Kansas  and  Nebraska — leaving  the  matter  of  bringing 
slaves  into  the  territory  to  be  decided  by  the  people  them- 
selves. The  bill  thus  extended  to  a  section  of  the  country 
closed  to  slavery  by  the  Missouri  Compromise  the  principle 
of  squatter  sovereignty. 

At  this  time  there  were  three  theories  on  the  question  of 
admitting  slaves  to  the  territories.  One  was  that  of  the 
lower  South,  early  urged  by  Rhett,  that  Congress  had  no 
right  to  exclude  slaves  from  the  common  domain,  that  only 
states  had  the  power  to  keep  out  slaves.  Another  was  the 
Wilmot  Proviso  view  that  Congress  should  exclude  slaves 
from  all  the  territories.  The  third  was  the  squatter  sover- 
eignty idea  that  Congress  should  not  interfere  at  all  but 
leave  the  question  of  slavery  to  be  decided  by  the  inhabitants 


72  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

of  the  territories  themselves.  The  first  demanded  action  of 
Congress  in  behalf  of  slavery;  the  second  against  slavery; 
the  third  neutrality.1 

Douglas's  bill  has  usually  been  represented  by  historians 
as  a  bombshell,  as  a  bolt  from  the  blue.  This  was  by  no 
means  the  case.  There  was  already  a  growing  belief  that 
the  Missouri  Compromise  had  been  superseded  by  the  Com- 
promise of  1850.  Moreover,  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  was 
not,  as  has  so  often  been  asserted,  a  bribe  to  the  South  for 
the  presidential  nomination  of  1856.  It  was  in  reality  a 
compromise  measure ;  it  gave  the  South  something,  or  rather 
it  appeared  to  give  the  South  something,  but  it  did  not 
establish  the  real  Southern  contention  that  slavery  should 
not  be  interfered  with  in  the  territories.  Popular  sovereignty 
might — as  a  matter  of  fact,  did — turn  against  the  South  in- 
stead of  in  its  favor.  The  new  territories  might  become 
free-labor,  not  slave,  states;  and  there  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  Douglas  expected  this  outcome.  He  was  in- 
terested in  getting  the  West  and  South  behind  him  for  the 
Democratic  nomination  in  1856,  but  he  was  not  attempting 
to  further  the  extension  of  slavery.  He  sought  to  dupe  the 
South,  not  bribe  it.    In  this  he  succeeded. 

The  lower  South  politicians  did  not  take  up  Douglas's 
bill  with  alacrity.  At  first  they  were  suspicious,  as  they  had 
every  right  to  be.  They  had  little  to  gain  and  much  to 
lose  by  it.  But  when  Dixon  of  Kentucky,  Clay's  successor 
in  the  Senate,  amended  the  bill  with  a  clause  declaring  the 
Missouri  Compromise  repealed,  they  gave  it  firm  support. 
Douglas  did  not  like  the  amendment,  but  he  had  to  accept 
it.  It  rallied  the  South  to  his  side,  but  it  at  once  awakened 
a  fury  of  opposition  in  the  North.    It  was  denounced  by  the 

*P.  O.  Ray,  The  Repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  187. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  73 

abolition  press  as  a  new  and  insolent  advance  of  the  Slave 
Power;  it  was  in  reality  an  effort  of  the  shrewdest  of  Ameri- 
can politicians  to  hoodwink  the  Slave  Power  for  his  own 
benefit. 

Douglas  now  felt  that  he  must  appeal  to  the  administra- 
tion for  support,  as  he  wished  to  force  the  bill  through  Con- 
gress before  the  country  had  time  to  become  fully  worked 
up  over  it:  the  storm  he  had  aroused  astonished  him,  for  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  no  new  idea.  Ac- 
cordingly, he  went  to  Jefferson  Davis,  Pierce's  friend  and 
alter  ego,  and  asked  him  to  procure  an  immediate  interview 
with  the  President.  The  day  was  Sunday  and  Pierce  was  a 
strict  Sabbatarian,  but  Douglas  was  too  disturbed  to  wait. 

This  was  the  most  critical  moment  in  the  life  of  Jefferson 
Davis.  His  action  now  was  charged  with  a  fatality  far  sur- 
passing that  of  1861,  for  by  that  time  the  issues  had  been 
made.  But  in  the  hour  when  Stephen  A.  Douglas  sought 
Davis's  assistance  for  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  the  future 
was  still  on  the  knees  of  the  gods.  Pierce's  approval  or 
disapproval  meant  the  success  or  failure  of  the  bill.  Davis 
was  all-powerful  with  Pierce,  and  he  could  have  turned  the 
administration  against  Douglas.  If  he  had  done  so,  he  would 
have  saved  the  South  from  a  tactical  error  that  made  war 
inevitable  by  bringing  on  a  fierce  and  useless  political  strug- 
gle in  which  the  South  had  no  chance  to  gain  anything  and 
which  inflamed  the  passions  of  both  sections  to  madness. 

Davis  did  not  see  into  the  future.  He  was  sufficiently  dis- 
turbed by  Douglas's  request,  however,  to  hesitate.  Finally 
he  agreed  to  go  with  Douglas  to  the  White  House  and  at- 
tempt to  obtain  an  interview  for  the  Illinoisian.  Pierce 
heard  what  Douglas  had  to  say  and  gave  his  approval  to 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  in  the  honest  belief  that  it  was  a 


74  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

further  compromise  measure,  a  sort  of  rider  to  the  Compro- 
mise of  1850.  It  is  true  that  neither  the  President  nor  the 
Secretary  of  War  lent  the  bill  active  support,  but  they  did 
not  oppose  it,  and  thereby  they  paved  the  way  for  secession 
and  war.  That  secession  at  this  time  was  not  in  Jefferson 
Davis's  thoughts  is  evident  from  his  strenuous  efforts  to 
strengthen  the  South  within  the  Union  and  his  projected 
railroad  across  the  country.  Yet  his  action  was  at  variance 
with  his  intention. 

This  was  the  first  great  mistake  of  Jefferson  Davis's 
career.  His  opposition  to  the  Compromise  of  1850  and  his 
semi-secession  campaign  in  1851  might  seem  mistakes,  and 
they  nearly  ended  his  political  life,  but  they  were  prompted 
by  a  sound  instinct  that  the  South  could  not  afford  to  accept 
a  compromise  that  gave  it  nothing.  When  he  turned  against 
secession  and  became  a  Unionist,  as  he  did,  the  case  was 
different.  It  was  his  intention,  then,  to  seek  to  prevent 
disruption;  but  his  support  of  Douglas  nullified  all  of  his 
efforts  and  accelerated  disunion. 

The  South,  in  1851,  had  elected  to  remain  in  the  Union. 
The  policy  it  should  have  followed  was  to  refuse  to  consent 
to  the  organization  of  new  territories  unless  granted  acces- 
sions itself.  It  was  the  policy  that  brought  about  the  Com- 
promise of  1850,  and  it  might  have  done  much  more.  The 
South  should  have  demanded  Cuba  or  a  slice  of  Mexico  in 
return  for  the  organization  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  as  free- 
labor  territories.  Cuba  or  more  of  Mexico  might  have  been 
bought  at  this  time  for  a  good  price.  Such  gains  would 
have  been  solid.  As  it  was,  all  that  Douglas's  measure 
gave  the  South  was  the  right  to  compete  with  the  North,  at 
every  disadvantage,  for  Kansas. 

The   South   had   no   idea  of  contesting  Nebraska.     It 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  75 

thought  that  it  could  secure  Kansas,  and  that  Nebraska  and 
Kansas  would  offset  each  other,  leaving  the  balance  of  power 
undisturbed.  There  was  no  reason  to  expect  to  gain  Kansas. 
The  whole  logic  of  the  political  situation  was  against  such  a 
calculation.  If  the  North  had  opposed  the  Mexican  War  for 
fear  of  the  acquisition  of  more  slave  territory  and  if  it 
resisted  the  winning  of  so  magnificent  a  domain  as  Cuba 
because  it  was  a  slave  island,  what  rational  hope  was  there 
that  it  would  consent  to  the  extension  of  slavery  in  the  West, 
on  the  very  borders  of  Iowa?  The  Southern  politicians 
showed  astonishingly  little  penetration  when  they  let  them- 
selves be  deluded  into  supporting  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill 
in  the  expectation  that  Kansas  would  become  a  slave  state. 
But  the  Southern  leaders  in  Congress  at  this  time  were 
mostly  second-rate.  Calhoun  was  dead  and  Rhett  was  in 
private  life.  Robert  W.  Toombs,  the  ablest  Southerner  in 
Congress,  was  absent  when  Douglas  introduced  his  bill  and 
was  appalled  on  returning  to  find  the  South  fully  committed 
to  it.  Jefferson  Davis  had  been  in  the  position  to  save  the 
South  from  a  fatal  blunder,  but  Douglas  had  overreached 
him  as  well  as  the  Southern  members  of  Congress. 

Davis  did  not  yet  realize,  what  he  was  soon  to  learn,  that 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  put  an  end  to  his  own  schemes  of 
expansion  and  to  his  Southern  Pacific  railway.  The  rage 
of  the  North  over  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise 
made  any  hope  of  accession  of  territory  outside  the  Union 
futile.  The  Southern  Pacific  railroad  was  also  wrecked. 
Indeed,  though  Davis  did  not  know  it,  Douglas's  bill  was 
designed  to  wreck  it.  Douglas  was  bent  on  pushing  his 
own  plan  for  a  Chicago-Pacific  railroad,  which  necessitated 
the  defeat  of  Davis's  railway.  The  ambitions  of  Douglas 
and  Davis  were  not  compatible,  and  yet  Davis  had  been 


76  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

gulled  into  supporting  his  rival.  It  is  seldom  that  a  politician 
makes  a  more  complete  smash  of  his  schemes  than  Jefferson 
Davis  did  when  he  lent  his  aid  to  Stephen  A.  Douglas  and 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill. 

The  South  had  put  itself  in  the  position  of  reopening  the 
slavery  contest  for  no  better  reward  than  the  vague  and 
uncertain  principle  of  squatter  or  popular  sovereignty.  It 
had  been  maneuvered  out  of  its  strong  position  of  opposi- 
tion to  the  formation  of  new  territories  by  this  poor  bait. 
It  was  pulling  the  chestnuts  out  of  the  fire  for  the  West. 
It  was  being  denounced  throughout  the  North  as  a  treaty 
breaker  in  advocating  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compro- 
mise when  it  was,  in  reality,  only  helping  Westerners  and 
foreigners  to  homes  on  free  lands  and  the  ambitious  town 
of  Chicago  to  become  the  railway  center  of  the  country. 
The  lower  South  had  nothing  whatever  to  hope  from  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  bill.  The  only  possible  Southern  gainer 
would  be  the  border  state  of  Missouri,  which  in  the  end 
gained  nothing  at  all. 

Why  should  the  South  have  hoped  to  gain  Kansas  as  a 
slave  state?  There  were  not  enough  slaves  to  cultivate 
cotton  in  the  lower  South.  The  demand  for  negroes  was 
constantly  growing.  Where,  then,  were  the  thousands  of 
slaves  needed  for  the  settlement  of  Kansas  as  a  slave  state 
to  come  from?  While  a  handful  of  Missouri  slave-owners 
wanted  new  lands,  a  thousand  Westerners  and  immigrants 
eagerly  craved  homesteads.  The  raw  West  was  a  country 
for  pioneers,  for  poor  men,  not  for  the  owners  of  such  ex- 
pensive chattels  as  slaves.  Surely  the  Southerners  were  out- 
witted when  they  came  to  the  support  of  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill.  It  was  indeed  an  ominous  sign  of  the  times 
that  the  South,  which  had  held  its  own  chiefly  by  political 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  77 

astuteness,  was  now  finding  the  politicians  of  other  sections 
to  be  more  astute  than  its  own.  Apparently,  the  motive 
that  led  the  lower  South  to  enter  Douglas's  trap  was  the 
desire  to  save  the  alliance  with  the  West,  for  which  it  had 
already  made  such  sacrifices.  Yet  the  result  of  the  Southern 
support  of  Douglas  was  not  the  cementing  of  the  alliance 
but  its  complete  and  final  overthrow. 

Everything  turned  out  awry.  The  blame  for  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill  was  put  largely  on  the  South.  The  feeling  in 
the  North  against  slavery  was  greatly  embittered  by  the  as- 
sertions, now  being  continually  made,  that  the  Slave  Power 
was  seeking  to  force  slavery  on  the  whole  country.  Douglas, 
who  had  hoped  to  unite  the  West  and  South  behind  him  for 
the  presidential  nomination  of  1856,  found  himself  regarded 
as  the  tool  of  the  Slave  Power.  His  unpopularity  in  the 
North  was  so  intense  that  he  was  set  aside  in  1856.  Nearly 
every  politician  of  the  Democratic  party  was  disqualified 
by  some  connection  with  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise. The  nomination  finally  went  to  James  Buchanan, 
chiefly  for  the  reason  that  he  had  been  in  England  and  so 
had  taken  no  part  in  the  matter.  The  Illinois  senator,  how- 
ever, did  not  abandon  his  hope  of  the  presidency;  he  only 
changed  his  position  so  as  to  win  back  his  lost  popularity. 

In  his  efforts  to  advance  the  interests  of  the  West  and 
make  himself  President,  he  had  set  forces  in  play  of  which 
he  had  not  dreamed.  He  had,  in  reality,  brought  about 
the  organization  of  the  Republican  party,  which  was  the 
political  expression  of  Northern  industrialism  and  Western 
anti-slavery  agriculturism.  It  immediately  showed  its 
economic  basis  by  becoming  strongly  protectionist.  The 
Republicans  nominated  their  first  presidential  candidate  in 
1856.    Buchanan  was  elected  over  him  by  so  slight  a  margin 


78  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

that  it  was  evident  that  the  long  hold  of  the  Democratic 
party  on  the  country  was  near  breaking. 

The  new  President  entered  office  as  the  principle  of  popu- 
lar sovereignty  was  being  put  to  the  test  in  Kansas.  The 
South  was  about  to  see  what  a  mess  of  pottage  it  had  re- 
ceived at  Douglas's  hands.  The  Missouri  planters,  pour- 
ing into  the  new  territory,  sought  to  win  it  for  the  South. 
At  the  same  time,  swarms  of  political  settlers  were  hurried 
there  by  emigrant-aid  societies  in  the  North.  It  became  a 
race  to  see  which  side  could  control  the  territorial  elections. 

Violence  soon  followed.  Many  of  the  settlers  were  gun- 
men and  lives  were  lost  on  both  sides.  The  anti-slavery  men 
dubbed  their  opponents  "border  ruffians."  On  the  other 
side,  John  Brown  gained  a  sinister  fame  by  killing  a  number 
of  pro-slavery  advocates.  In  the  beginning,  the  pro-slavery 
men  were  in  a  majority,  but  the  crowds  of  immigrants  from 
the  North  soon  turned  the  scale  against  them.  It  was  evi- 
dent that  the  anti-slaverites  would  control  the  government. 

In  hurrying  throngs  of  settlers  to  Kansas  in  order  to 
resist  the  introduction  of  slaves,  the  North  was  right.  The 
great  grain-growing  fields  of  the  West  were  needed  as  homes 
for  poor  Easterners  and  Europeans.  The  South,  in  abandon- 
ing its  proper  policy  of  extending  southward  into  the  tropics, 
put  itself  in  the  wrong,  and  in  a  hopeless  cause.  There  was 
never  any  chance  that  Kansas  would  become  planter  soil. 
Popular  sovereignty  favored  superior  numbers  even  more 
than  did  Congress.  It  was  evident  that  both  Nebraska  and 
Kansas  would  become  anti-slavery  territories.  The  South 
had  been  gulled. 

But  the  Southerners  were  now  so  thoroughly  aroused 
that  they  refused  to  bow  to  the  inevitable.  They  had  never 
really  believed  in  popular  sovereignty  or  expected  much 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  79 

from  it:  it  was  Western,  not  Southern.  When  it  began  to 
register  the  will  of  the  anti-slavery  army  of  settlers,  the 
South  turned  to  the  doctrine,  announced  by  Calhoun  and 
Rhett,  of  the  equal  rights  of  slaveholders  in  the  territories. 
It  is  difficult  to  see  what  they  hoped  for  from  this  doctrine  in 
the  case  of  Kansas.  It  was  certain  that  Kansas  would  have 
a  large  majority  of  citizens  opposed  to  slavery.  Even  if  it 
should  be  admitted  under  a  slave  constitution,  slavery  would 
not  be  bound  thereby  on  the  state.  The  anti-slavery  ma- 
jority could  abolish  slavery,  and  Congress  would  be 
powerless  to  interfere.  Congress  could  keep  Kansas  from 
being  an  anti-slavery  territory;  it  could  not  keep  it  from 
being  a  free-labor  state.  Yet  the  Southerners  now  bent  their 
efforts  to  defeat  the  workings  of  popular  sovereignty. 

They  were  suddenly  aided  by  the  third  arm  of  the  govern- 
ment, the  judiciary.  The  Supreme  Court,  late  in  1856,  in 
the  famous  Dred  Scott  case,  ruled  that  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise was  unconstitutional  (thirty-six  years  after  it  had 
come  into  effect!)  and  that  the  people  of  all  the  states  had 
the  right  to  carry  their  property  into  any  of  the  territories. 
Neither  Congress  nor  popular  sovereignty  might  exclude  the 
property  of  citizens  from  the  territories,  and  slaves  were 
property. 

From  a  certain  point  of  view  this  decision  sounds  reason- 
able: it  would  seem  unconstitutional  to  discriminate  against 
any  class  of  citizens  in  the  territories.  But  legal  logic  is 
almost  as  artificial  as  the  medieval  problem  as  to  the 
number  of  angels  who  can  dance  on  the  point  of  a  needle. 
Legally,  indeed,  slaves  were  mere  property,  yet  even  legally 
they  were  very  different  from  other  property.  It  was  mur- 
der to  kill  a  slave,  and  slaves  were  represented  in  Congress. 
They  were  such  a  singular  form  of  property  that  they  threat- 


80  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

ened  to  bring  down  the  Union  in  ruins:  they  constituted  the 
bone  of  contention  between  the  planter  South,  which  lived 
by  their  labor,  and  the  industrial  North,  which  paid  wages. 
To  treat  them,  then,  as  dry  goods  or  cattle  was  the  very 
insanity  of  legality. 

The  South,  however,  had  become  so  exasperated  by  the 
long  dispute  that  began  in  1846,  with  the  Wilmot  Proviso, 
and  now  after  ten  years  was  more  furious  than  ever,  that 
it  seized  on  the  Dred  Scott  opinion  as  a  means  of  winning 
its  case  in  Kansas.  It  did  not  realize  what  Shakespeare  has 
so  admirably  illustrated  in  The  Merchant  0}  Venice,  that 
the  minority — the  real  minority  in  power — cannot  use  the 
law  to  wrest  a  victory  from  the  majority  when  the  majority 
is  aroused.  A  Portia  always  arises  to  prove  the  Tightness 
of  the  strong.  The  greatest  mistake  the  South  made,  in  all 
its  contest  with  the  North,  was  in  imagining  that  a  great 
political  conflict,  which  had  embittered  the  whole  country, 
could  be  settled  by  a  court  decision — that  the  North  would 
tamely  abandon  its  contention  at  the  bidding  of  a  majority 
of  the  Supreme  Court  judges.  Yet  this  was  what  the  South- 
erners, Jefferson  Davis  foremost  among  them,  expected. 

Before  the  Kansas-Nebraska  act,  Davis  had  in  the  main 
shown  political  wisdom.  He  had  made  his  first  great  mis- 
take in  lending  Douglas  his  help  in  that  matter.  He  now 
made  a  worse  blunder  by  demanding  the  acceptance  of  the 
Dred  Scott  opinion  as  a  basis  of  settling  the  slavery  question. 
In  a  notable  speech  in  Mississippi,  in  October,  1857,  Jeffer- 
son Davis  declared  that  popular  sovereignty  had  failed  and 
that  the  federal  government  was  under  obligation  to  protect 
slavery  in  the  territories.  "African  slavery,"  he  said,  "as 
it  exists  in  the  United  States  is  a  moral,  a  social,  and  a 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  81 

political  blessing."  *  These  bold  and  perhaps  not  altogether 
untrue  words,  since  slavery  was  the  corner  stone  of  Nordic 
rule,  were  unfortunate  in  that  they  tended  to  blind  the 
South  to  the  reality  of  the  situation  and  the  impossibility 
of  securing  the  acceptance  of  the  Dred  Scott  opinion  in  the 
North.  Davis  himself  was  a  blind  leader  of  the  blind  on 
this  issue. 

Jefferson  Davis  entered  the  Senate  again  this  year.  His 
semi-secessionist  attitude  of  185 1  had  not  yet  been  forgotten, 
and  the  legislature  in  1856  elected  him  over  the  Unionist, 
Foote,  only  by  the  vote  of  the  presiding  officer.  He  had 
now  no  thought  of  secession,  however,  though  his  attitude  on 
the  Dred  Scott  opinion  was  destined  to  lead  once  more  in 
that  direction. 

He  found  the  Senate  a  new  body,  much  changed  from  its 
former  ponderous  dignity.  The  fierce  passions  let  loose  by 
the  struggle  over  the  Kansas-Nebraska  act  were  not  to  be 
kept  down  by  tradition,  and  the  Northerners  exasperated 
the  Southerners  by  cold  and  deliberate  insult  while  the 
Southerners  angered  their  opponents  by  their  arrogant,  fire- 
eating  manners.  Indeed,  the  politicians  of  the  lower  South, 
who  had  pushed  aside  the  tamer  representatives  of  the 
border  states  and  were  now  in  the  saddle,  were  of  a  new 
type.  They  were  tropic  Nordics,  personally  brave  and  ac- 
customed to  dueling,  despots  used  to  ruling  slaves,  politicians 
elected  by  independent  farmers,  haughty,  truthful,  honest 
— a  fine  if  tempestuous  kind  of  men.  One  of  them  pro- 
voked the  North  to  utter  fury  by  assaulting  Sumner  in  re- 
venge for  a  gross  insult.  To  such  things  did  Congress  come 
in  the  strife  between  the  two  types  of  American  civilization 
that  was  now  tearing  the  Union  to  pieces! 

1Dodd,  Jefferson  Davis,  154. 


82  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Douglas  poured  oil  on  the  flames  of  the  sectional  warfare 
by  the  new  course  he  adopted.  All  his  calculations  had  gone 
wrong.  The  Kansas-Nebraska  act,  intended  to  benefit  the 
West,  was  looked  on  as  a  bribe  for  planter  support.  The 
South,  aware  that  it  had  been  duped  and  dragged  into  an- 
other anti-slavery  contest  with  little  prospect  of  gain,  was  in 
no  humor  to  acquiesce  in  popular  sovereignty,  which  gave 
Kansas  to  the  North.  It  now  stood  for  the  Dred  Scott  opin- 
ion. Conversely,  the  North  was  well  satisfied  with  popular 
sovereignty,  since  that  policy  worked  for  its  benefit.  Doug- 
las had  come  out  boldly  on  the  side  of  the  North,  declaring 
that  popular  sovereignty  made  Kansas  territory  free-labor 
soil.  By  this  stroke  the  agile  politician  regained  his  lost 
popularity  in  the  North  but  lost  his  friends  in  the  South. 
It  was  in  vain  that  the  Little  Giant,  like  a  modern  preacher 
reconciling  science  and  religion,  sought  to  show  that  popular 
sovereignty  and  the  Dred  Scott  opinion  were  not  in  conflict. 
The  Southerners,  who  had  been  fooled  once,  were  in  no  mood 
to  listen  to  protestations  intended  merely  to  soothe  their 
defeat.  Douglas  all  along  had  been  for  the  West  and  the 
West  alone,  and  he  had  come  to  stand  with  the  North 
since  the  West  and  North  were  being  brought  into  an  alliance 
by  the  threat  of  Kansas  as  a  slavery  state. 

In  essence,  he  was  right:  Kansas  was  lost  to  the  South, 
and  the  South  might  as  well  have  faced  the  situation.  But 
the  federal  government  now  took  a  hand  in  the  interests  of 
the  slavery  section.  It  did  this,  partly  because  it  was  under 
Southern  influence  but  more  because  it  had  an  instinctive 
feeling  that  the  welfare  of  the  country  was  bound  up  in  the 
balance  of  power,  which  had  preserved  peace  so  long. 
James  Buchanan  has  been  much  abused  and  little  defended, 
but  he  was,  in  reality,  one  of  the  most  patriotic  and  broad- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  83 

minded  public  men  the  country  has  ever  had.  In  the  inter- 
ests of  peace  he  sought  to  win  Kansas  for  the  South. 

Yet  the  administration,  generally,  was  fair.  It  sent  out 
governors  to  Kansas  who  were  so  little  partisan  that  several 
of  them  went  over  to  the  anti-slavery  faction  in  the  terri- 
tory. Jefferson  Davis,  as  Secretary  of  War,  chose  Colonel 
E.  V.  Sumner,  a  free-soiler,  as  military  commander,  and 
when  Sumner  dispersed  an  anti-slavery  legislature  the  Secre- 
tary informed  him  that  he  should  not  have  interfered  so  long 
as  the  anti-slaverites  kept  the  peace.  "Personally  and  offi- 
cially," says  John  W.  Burgess  in  discussing  this  incident, 
"Mr.  Davis  was  a  remarkably  upright  man,  and  was  ac- 
customed to  take  counsel  of  his  own  judgment  and  con- 
science." * 

Buchanan,  under  the  influence  of  Jefferson  Davis  and 
Howell  Cobb,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  nevertheless  made 
strong  efforts  to  induce  Kansas  to  accept  a  pro-slavery  state 
constitution.  There  came  to  be  two  territorial  governments 
and  two  constitutions,  one  slavery  and  the  other  free-labor. 
In  the  meantime,  Douglas  shook  the  Senate  with  his  de- 
nunciations of  the  administration  for  favoring  the  South: 
it  was  difficult  to  believe  that  he  was  the  same  man  who 
had  lately  been  hand  in  glove  with  the  planters  of  the  lower 
South.  Naturally,  the  Southerners  rallied  to  the  defense  of 
Buchanan.  Jefferson  Davis  made  some  notable  speeches 
in  debates  with  Douglas  and  the  Republicans  as  well.  He 
was  supported  by  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  of  Virginia,  Robert 
Toombs  of  Georgia  and  Judah  P.  Benjamin  of  Louisiana, 
leading  Southerners  of  the  time.  The  Senate,  swept  by 
bursts  of  passion  and  ringing  with  furious  charge  and 
counter-charge,  was  a  very  different  body  from  the  stately 

1The  Middle  Period,  472. 


84  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

chamber  of  Webster  and  Clay.  Davis  was  clearly  the  fore- 
most figure  on  the  Southern  side,  but  he  cannot  be  said  to 
have  shown  wise  leadership.  He  did  much  to  make  the 
breach  between  the  Northern  wing  of  the  Democratic  party 
and  the  Southern  irreparable.  He  steadily  played  into  the 
hands  of  the  Republicans  without  knowing  it.  But  as  has 
been  said  before,  Jefferson  Davis  was  much  of  a  statesman 
and  little  of  a  politician.    He  had  ability  without  shrewdness. 

Though  Davis's  scheme  for  a  Southern  Pacific  railway 
was  now  hopeless,  he  did  not  realize  this.  He  gained  Bu- 
chanan's support  for  it,  as  he  had  Pierce's,  but  the  railroad 
was  swallowed  up  in  the  furious  Kansas  debates  that  oc- 
cupied most  of  the  time  of  Congress  and  threatened  at  times 
to  develop  into  pistol  fights.  Cuba,  Nicaragua,  Mexico,  all 
went  by  the  board.  This  was  the  price  of  the  effort  to  win 
Kansas  as  a  slavery  state. 

The  other  leaders  in  the  Senate  were  Douglas  and  William 
H.  Seward  of  New  York,  the  creator  and  head  of  the  Re- 
publican party  and  one  of  the  ablest  politicians  the  United 
States  has  ever  produced.  He  announced  the  "irrepressible 
conflict"  between  North  and  South  and  attacked  planter 
civilization  as  if  it  was  something  inherently  wicked  and  in- 
famous. So  indeed  it  seemed  to  the  non-Nordic  North  on 
the  eve  of  the  Civil  War.  The  Northerners,  peaceable,  or- 
derly, business-like,  industrious,  could  not  understand  the 
tropic  Nordics,  who  rode  fast  horses  and  hunted  and  rioted 
and  fought  with  pistols:  passionate,  haughty,  masterful  men, 
as  Nordics  have  mostly  been.  They  were  very  generous  and 
very  violent.  They  often  treated  their  slaves  with  ridicu- 
lous over-indulgence,  and  sometimes  they  were  harsh  and 
cruel  to  them.  They  were  seldom  calculating,  logical,  prac- 
tical; ordinarily,  they  were  impulsive,  reckless  and  affection- 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  85 

ate.  Northerners,  who  had  begun  to  detest  dueling  in  1804, 
with  Hamilton's  fall,  really  could  not  understand  the  South- 
ern Nordic  and  his  antique  free,  careless  existence,  with  its 
terrible  blood  code.  Not  understanding,  they  called  the 
South  evil:  to  be  different  is  to  be  wrong.  Seward  perfectly 
represented  this  attitude.  His  policy  was  simply  one  of 
opposition  to  the  South  on  every  issue.  His  sole  method 
was  to  ride  over  the  South  roughshod;  he  never  spoke  of  the 
South  except  in  the  language  of  denunciation.  Thus,  be- 
tween Davis  and  the  Southerners,  playing  their  hopeless 
game  for  Kansas,  and  Seward  and  the  Northerners,  who  op- 
posed the  South  with  furious  hatred,  there  was  little  chance 
for  the  small  band  of  politicians  whose  main  aim  was  to 
preserve  the  Union  and  who  were  willing  to  make  sacrifices 
to  that  end.  Douglas,  with  his  incessant  abuse  of  the  ad- 
ministration, added  the  one  thing  needed  to  make  confusion 
complete  and  passion  triumphant  over  reason. 

This  somewhat  second-rate  trio  of  Davis,  Douglas  and 
Seward  had  succeeded  the  mighty  triumvirate  of  Webster, 
Clay  and  Calhoun.  As  a  debater,  Davis  was  superior  both 
to  Douglas  and  Seward,  but  as  a  party  leader  he  was  in- 
comparably inferior.  He  was  unable  to  accomplish  any- 
thing as  the  head  of  what  may  be  called  the  Southern  party 
in  the  Senate.  He  lacked  cunning  and  management.  All 
his  life  he  was  aiming  at  great  statesmanlike  projects  which 
his  political  incapacity  brought  to  nought.  He  was  anything 
but  a  practical  politician.  He  was  too  proud,  too  solitary, 
too  sensitive  for  that.  He  was  really  too  high-minded  for  a 
career  in  politics;  he  should  have  remained  a  soldier  and 
a  planter.  Because  he  could  not  lead  the  South  effectively  in 
this  crisis,  the  crisis  continually  grew  in  seriousness  until  it 
ended  in  secession  and  war. 


86  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

The  Northern  politicians  of  the  period,  who  included  Sew- 
ard, Wade,  Wilson,  Hale,  Sumner,  Chase,  Bates,  Cameron, 
and  others  almost  as  notable,  were  abler  than  Davis,  Toombs, 
Cobb,  Hunter,  Benjamin,  Brown,  Stephens  and  their  con- 
freres. This  is  one  of  the  reasons  that  the  Civil  War  came 
when  it  did.  The  Southerners,  not  only  outnumbered  but 
outmaneuvered,  were  driven  into  a  cul-de-sac  from  which 
secession  was  the  only  escape.  The  Northern  leaders  of 
the  time  were  great  men;  the  country  has  seldom  seen  abler. 
The  very  natural  adulation  of  Lincoln  has  somewhat  tended 
to  throw  into  obscurity  these  politicians  who  really  brought 
about  the  situation  by  which  Lincoln  profited.  His  great  and 
picturesque  personality  has  dwarfed  characters  of  signifi- 
cance, which  is  the  habit  of  history.  The  Republican  leaders 
were  the  strongest  Nordics  of  the  mid-century,  though,  with 
the  irony  of  fate,  they  were  engaged  in  fighting  the  non- 
Nordic  battle  of  industrialism  and  city  civilization  against 
the  outdoors  and  the  planter. 

The  South,  handicapped  by  lack  of  leadership,  was  falling 
into  a  precarious  position.  The  alliance  with  the  West  was 
now  broken,  and  the  South  was  definitely  in  a  minority.  The 
temper  of  the  Southern  people  had  changed  greatly  since 
1850.  They  were  beginning  to  believe  that  they  had  no 
real  place  in  the  Union,  that  there  would  be  no  peace  as  long 
as  they  remained  in  the  Union.  Under  the  constant  de- 
nunciation of  the  North,  the  Southerners  were  losing  their 
great  love  for  the  Union.  It  appeared  that  the  two  sections 
would  soon  be  unable  to  meet  in  a  common  parliament.  The 
ordinary  business  of  government  was  becoming  impossible. 
Consequently,  the  farthest-sighted  Southerners  were  fast 
coming  to  Rhett's  view  that  secession  was  the  only  remedy 
for  the  disease.    Yet  the  cautious  still  clung  to  the  Union, 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  87 

hoping  that  the  country  would  be  saved  by  some  miraculous 
compromise.  Webster  and  Clay  had  prevented  secession  in 
1850;  why  could  it  not  be  done  again?  The  Southern 
Unionists  did  not  realize  that  years  of  bitter  strife  had  in- 
tensified the  crisis  and  that  there  were  no  men  to  fill  the 
shoes  of  Webster  and  Clay. 

The  extremists  in  both  sections  were  steadily  gaining 
ground.  Between  the  radicals,  Northern  and  Southern,  who 
were  together  brewing  the  war  broth,  Jefferson  Davis  ap- 
peared as  a  moderate.  He  stood  for  the  South,  but  he  was 
more  conciliatory  than  most  Southerners.  Beyond  doubt, 
he  had  some  dream  of  the  presidency  in  i860,  but  quite 
apart  from  this  he  was  a  sincere  Unionist.  He  turned  away 
from  secession  in  1851  and  he  never  really  became  a  seces- 
sionist again.  Fate,  and  not  his  own  volition,  put  him  in 
the  position  of  a  disunion  leader.  No  man  in  the  country, 
North  or  South,  made  greater  efforts  to  avert  secession  than 
he  did  when  he  saw  that  it  was  actually  impending. 

Yet  he  did  much  to  bring  it  about,  quite  unconsciously. 
Rhett  and  Yancey  had  the  hardihood  and  the  clearness  of 
vision  to  advocate  disunion  years  before  it  took  place  and 
to  continue  to  urge  it.  Davis,  on  the  other  hand,  clung  to 
Calhoun's  idea  of  making  the  South  predominant  within  the 
Union.  Rhett  abandoned  his  master's  pet  theory  because 
he  had  penetration  enough  to  see  that  it  was  hopeless.  Davis 
lacked  Rhett's  prevision  and  his  pessimism.  He  failed  to 
understand  the  critical  nature  of  the  situation.  He  still  de- 
manded Southern  rights  and  still  hoped  for  a  united  country, 
things  now  incompatible.  He  did  not  realize  that  the  South 
had  either  to  give  way  or  to  secede — that  there  was  no  other 
choice. 

At  this  time,  in  the  late  fifties,  the  delicate  nerves  of 


88  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Jefferson  Davis  broke  down  under  the  strain  of  the  incessant 
controversy.  His  eyes  became  inflamed  and  he  was  tortured 
by  resulting  nervous  headaches.  It  is  probable  that  his  eyes, 
chronically  infected,  were  the  main  cause  of  Davis's 
neurasthenia.  He  finally  became  practically  blind  in  one 
eye.  In  the  summer  of  1858,  he  went  North  for  his  health 
and  enjoyably  mixed  politics  with  recuperation.  He  appears 
to  have  sounded  the  Northern  Democrats  on  his  presidential 
chances.  He  made  a  number  of  speeches  and  was  treated 
with  great  courtesy  by  Northern  audiences.  In  a  period  of 
bitter  language,  he  distinguished  himself  by  temperate  and 
conciliatory  utterances.  He  spoke  of  his  love  for  the  Union, 
which  was  wise  as  well  as  sincere,  and  urged  the  acceptance 
of  the  Dred  Scott  opinion,  which  was  impolitic.  He  made  an 
excellent,  if  transitory,  impression  upon  his  auditors,  who 
were  pleased  with  his  oratory.  Rightly.  No  other  public 
speaker  of  the  time  was  more  convincing  in  argument  and 
more  pleasing  in  manner  than  Jefferson  Davis.  Like  Wood- 
row  Wilson,  he  owed  his  eminent  position  largely  to  his 
speech-making. 

In  Boston,  he  held  a  love  feast  with  Caleb  Cushing  and, 
for  a  moment,  dreamed  of  reconciliation  and  peace.  "True 
men,"  he  wrote,  "could  effect  much  by  giving  to  the  opposite 
section  the  views  held  by  the  other.  The  difference  is  less 
than  I  expected."  The  difference  between  Davis  and  Cush- 
ing was  indeed  small;  but  broad,  tolerant,  kindly  politicians 
of  somewhat  easy-going  morality  like  Cushing  were  few  and 
far  between.  This  is  the  type  of  statesman  under  whom  the 
world  gets  on  best.  It  is  the  men  with  idealistic  ambitions 
and  the  men  with  high  convictions,  who  stand  on  principle 
and  refuse  to  compromise  with  wrong,  that  make  wars. 
Practical  politicians  seldom  do.    They  live  and  let  live.    This 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  89 

is,  to  some  extent,  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Jefferson  Davis. 
As  a  young  and  inexperienced  politician  in  185 1,  he  had 
stood  for  Southern  rights  to  the  point  of  secession.  In  i860, 
as  a  public  man  somewhat  perverted  by  the  world  and  cor- 
rupted by  ambition,  he  dreaded  secession  and  war.  By  just 
so  much  as  he  had  degenerated  from  his  originally  idealistic 
and  austere  standard  he  had  come  to  accept  compromise. 
Indeed,  in  1861  he  seceded  with  great  reluctance,  without 
any  lofty  enthusiasm  for  principle  whatever. 

If  Davis  dreamed  of  the  presidency,  he  did  not  dream 
long.  John  Brown's  raid  into  Virginia,  late  in  1859,  intensi- 
fied the  crisis  which  must  come,  as  all  men  knew,  with  the 
approaching  election  of  i860.  The  raid  practically  ended 
the  hope  of  compromise.  It  gave  a  powerful  impulse  to  se- 
cession by  revealing  to  the  bewildered  South  the  hatred  felt 
for  it  by  the  North.  The  South  was  torn  by  grief  and  rage. 
It  could  not  understand  that  the  Northern  hatred  for  it  was 
natural,  even  inevitable;  just  as  youth  hates  age,  young 
civilizations  and  new  institutions  hate  the  past  and  those 
who  stand  for  the  past.  In  the  non-Nordic,  industrialist, 
democratic,  public-school  world  of  i860,  the  aristocratic, 
bond-slavery,  rural  South  was  an  anachronism,  and  therefore 
hateful.  But  it  was  anything  but  a  weak  and  decaying 
anachronism;  it  was  so  vigorous  an  anachronism  that  it 
threatened  to  turn  the  scales  against  modernity  and  win  a 
notable  victory  for  the  old  agricultural  civilization  of  the 
world.  It  was  because  of  this  threat  of  the  tropic  Nordics 
that  the  hatred  of  the  North  for  the  South  was  so  keen. 

Even  in  i860,  after  John  Brown's  raid,  Jefferson  Davis 
did  not  despair  of  a  peaceable  settlement  of  the  difficulties 
between  the  North  and  the  South.  He  was  a  Unionist  and 
a  man  whose  ambition  was  to  be  President  of  the  United 


90  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

States.  Yet  he  played  into  the  hands  of  the  fomenters  of 
strife  and  ended  by  becoming  the  revolutionary  President 
of  the  South.  There  has  seldom  been  a  more  complete  hiatus 
between  purpose  and  result. 

The  one  man  who  might  have  averted  secession,  by  a 
very  curious  irony  of  fate  was  the  man  who  had  precipitated 
the  crisis  that  threatened  to  end  in  secession,  Stephen  A. 
Douglas.  He  was  the  only  Democrat  who  might  have  been 
elected  in  i860,  and  only  the  election  of  a  Democrat  could 
have  kept  the  states  together.  In  the  passion  of  the  hour, 
the  triumph  of  a  sectional  party  meant  separation,  and  the 
Republican  party  was  sectional.  Douglas  was  the  one  great 
national  figure,  for  he  had  supporters  in  every  section,  many 
even  in  the  South.  If  nominated  by  an  undivided  Demo- 
cratic party  his  chances  of  election  would  be  good,  because 
he  would  be  certain  to  carry  all  the  Southern  states  and 
some  of  the  Northern  and  Western.  The  danger  he  ran 
was  that  of  a  break  between  the  Northern  and  Southern 
wings  of  the  Democratic  party  similar  to  the  division  in  the 
Republican  party  in  191 2. 

The  break  occurred,  and  Jefferson  Davis  was  as  much 
responsible  for  it  as  any  other  man.  He  allowed  resentment 
to  smother  policy,  another  indication  of  the  fact  that  he 
was  a  poor  politician.  His  influence  would  probably  have 
sufficed  to  bring  about  the  nomination  of  Douglas.  He  did 
all  in  his  power  to  prevent  it.  His  bitterness  against  Doug- 
las was  perfectly  human  and  natural,  for  Douglas  had  led 
the  South  into  a  trap  and  then  abandoned  it.  What  Davis 
failed  to  realize  was  that  Douglas  was  substantially  right  in 
his  new  attitude  on  Kansas.  The  Dred  Scott  opinion  was 
really  of  little  value,  as  Douglas  showed,  for  there  was  no 
way  of  keeping  a  state  a  slave  state  against  the  will  of  a 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  91 

majority  of  its  inhabitants.  But  the  South  refused  to 
acquiesce  in  a  defeat  that  would  add  four  new  senators  to 
the  number  of  its  enemies  in  Congress.  It  had  itself,  by 
agreeing  to  the  organization  of  the  two  territories,  over- 
turned the  balance  of  power  in  the  Senate  against  itself. 
No  wonder  that  the  South  was  raging. 

Yet  Douglas,  if  he  had  gulled  the  South  for  the  benefit 
of  Chicago  and  the  West,  was  in  great  need  of  the  South. 
Only  by  its  support  could  he  hope  to  be  elected.  And  he 
was  by  no  means  hostile  to  the  South;  he  was  a  man  of  broad 
sympathies  and  had  married  a  Southern  woman.  The  South 
then  had  a  good  opportunity  to  drive  a  bargain  with  him. 
If  it  had  given  up  Kansas,  it  could  have  secured  a  pledge 
from  Douglas  to  work  for  the  annexation  of  Cuba,  worth  a 
dozen  Kansases  to  the  South.  Being  the  most  adroit  political 
manager  of  the  time,  Douglas  might  possibly  have  acquired 
the  island,  which  had  eluded  the  amateur  diplomacy  of 
Davis,  Buchanan,  Soule  and  Mason.  The  South  had  noth- 
ing to  lose  by  the  election  of  Douglas  but  Kansas,  already 
doubly  and  trebly  lost,  and  much  to  gain.  Clearly,  its  policy 
was  to  bury  the  hatchet  and  elect  Douglas. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  Buchanan  and  the  lesser 
lights  of  the  administration  would  see  this,  but  Jefferson 
Davis  should  have  seen  it.  True,  he  would  have  been 
harshly  criticized  in  the  South  if  he  had  supported  Douglas 
in  i860,  but  the  criticism  would  have  been  temporary  and 
the  gain  permanent.  There  are  times  when  a  master  poli- 
tician does  the  unpopular  thing,  trusting  to  the  inevitable 
reaction  for  vindication.  Yet  timidity  did  not  move  Davis 
to  oppose  Douglas,  but  passion.  He  hated  the  Illinoisian. 
"The  decency  and  good  sense  of  the  people,"  he  said  in  ref- 
erence to  Douglas,,  "must  revolt  against  the  chicanery  by 


92  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

which  the  presidency  is  sought  by  certain  ambitious  dema- 
gogues." x 

With  the  fate  of  the  country  largely  in  his  hands  because 
of  his  influence  with  the  administration,  Jefferson  Davis 
joined  in  an  intrigue  of  the  Democratic  leaders  to  bring 
about  the  rejection  of  Douglas  at  the  nominating  conven- 
tion. Together  with  President  Buchanan  and  John  Slidell 
and  Caleb  Cushing,  he  controlled  the  national  committee  of 
the  Democratic  party.  The  committee,  far  in  advance  of 
the  convention,  planned  to  defeat  Douglas.  It  named 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  as  the  place  for  the  convention. 
Charleston,  the  center  of  the  lower  South  and  the  stamping 
ground  of  intransigent  opinions,  was  a  bad  selection  for 
Douglas:  it  was  probably  a  part  of  the  scheme  to  jockey  him 
out  of  the  nomination  by  making  the  weight  of  the  lower 
South  fully  felt,  for  conventions  usually  met  in  border  states. 
The  result  of  the  committee's  planning  was  that  the  lower 
South  prepared  to  dictate  the  policy  of  the  Democratic  party 
when  the  convention  met  in  April,  i860. 

It  was  a  notable  gathering  of  politicians  in  the  most  pic- 
turesque of  American  cities,  the  last  general  muster  of  the 
old  Democratic  party.  Charleston  was  second  to  no  city  in 
the  country  in  culture  and  charm;  probably  no  other  city 
of  the  time  equaled  it.  In  luxury  and  enjoyment  of  life  it 
was  quite  unique  in  America.  Here  the  planter  aristocracy, 
in  complete  control,  extended  a  gracious  hospitality  to  the 
delegates  from  the  whole  country,  including  Tammany  Hall, 
then  much  what  it  is  now.  Northerners  and  Westerners  fell 
under  the  spell  of  the  quaint  old  town  dressed  in  all  the 
flowery  beauty  of  the  Southern  spring. 

The  convention  immediately  divided  into  two  factions — 

1  American  Historical  Review,  10,  361. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  93 

Douglas  and  anti-Douglas.  The  main  fight,  however,  was 
over  the  platform  rather  than  the  candidate.  Yancey,  the 
Alabama  fire-eater,  attempted  the  blind  folly  of  binding  the 
Northerners  and  Westerners  to  the  acceptance  of  the  Dred 
Scott  opinion:  his  platform  really  consisted  of  a  set  of 
resolutions  introduced  in  the  Senate  by  Jefferson  Davis,  to 
wit,  that  Congress  was  obliged  to  protect  slavery  in  the  terri- 
tories. The  platform  committee  actually  presented  this  ab- 
surdity to  the  convention  as  its  report,  but  the  convention 
revolted.  A  minority  report  declaring  for  popular  sov- 
ereignty was  adopted  instead. 

Douglas  would  now  have  been  nominated  but  for  the 
foolish  Democratic  rule  which  requires  a  two-thirds  ma- 
jority. He  had  a  majority  but  not  such  a  majority  as  that. 
The  lower  South  was  able  to  block  his  nomination,  though 
it  could  neither  dictate  the  platform  nor  name  the  candidate. 
At  this  point  Yancey  proceeded  to  wreck  the  Democratic 
party.  He  ventured  on  the  unwarrantable  step  of  leaving 
the  convention  because  he  could  not  have  his  own  way:  a 
number  of  fellow  fire-eaters  dramatically  marched  out  of 
the  hall  with  him.    The  lower  South  sustained  their  action. 

The  last  hope  of  averting  secession  now  passed,  because 
the  one  truly  national  institution,  the  Democratic  party, 
was  sundered.  What  was  left  of  the  convention  went  to 
Baltimore  and  nominated  Douglas.  The  lower  South  had  a 
convention  of  its  own  at  Richmond  and  nominated  John  C. 
Breckinridge,  the  Vice  President.  The  old  Whigs  brought 
out  John  Bell  of  Tennessee.  The  opposition  to  the  Repub- 
licans was  thus  hopelessly  divided  between  Douglas,  the 
Western  candidate;  Breckinridge,  the  Southern  candidate, 
and  Bell,  the  candidate  of  the  border  states. 

Davis  had  done  much  to  bring  about  this  catastrophe,  for 


94  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  approved  of  Yancey's  action. 
When  Douglas  denounced  him  in  the  Senate  as  the  destroyer 
of  the  Democratic  party,  in  forcing  the  Dred  Scott  plank  on 
the  platform  committee,  he  answered,  rather  lamely,  that  he 
only  asked  what  the  Constitution  granted  and  the  Supreme 
Court  confirmed.  For  once  his  self-control  left  him — prob- 
ably because  he  was  stung  by  the  truth  of  Douglas's  charge 
— and  he  used  bitter  words. 

Already  the  Mississippi  senator  was  beginning  to  realize 
his  mistake.  He  had  ruined  Douglas  only  to  elect  Lincoln. 
He  now  made  a  final  effort  to  save  the  party  he  had  done  so 
much  to  destroy  and  to  prevent  the  disruption  of  the  Union. 
Seeing  Douglas,  he  sought  to  persuade  him  to  withdraw, 
along  with  Breckinridge  and  Bell,  in  favor  of  a  single  can- 
didate on  whom  the  opposition  to  Lincoln  might  unite. 
Douglas  briefly  replied  that  he  could  not  withdraw  because 
he  was  the  only  man  able  to  hold  the  votes  of  the  Northern 
Democrats.  Davis  should  have  seen  this  in  the  first  place: 
it  was  evident  to  all  the  Northern  politicians  and  was  the 
reason  for  their  resolute  stand  for  Douglas  at  Charleston. 
But  Jefferson  Davis's  principal  intellectual  defect  was  lack 
of  foresight.  He  had  clearness  of  vision,  logic,  power  of 
analysis  and  continuity  of  thought,  but  singularly  little  skill 
in  calculating  the  outcome  of  events. 

Davis  supported  Breckinridge  but  took  little  part  in  the 
campaign,  which  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  Lincoln  was 
elected  by  a  large  electoral  majority  but  by  so  small  a 
plurality  of  the  popular  vote  over  Douglas  that  it  is  evident 
the  latter  would  have  had  an  excellent  chance  if  he  had  been 
supported  by  an  undivided  party.  Breckinridge  carried  the 
lower  South;  Bell  the  border  states. 

The  South  was  now  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  95 

secession.  A  hostile  administration  would  soon  be  added  to 
a  largely  hostile  Congress.  Yancey  was  pleased,  Rhett 
vindicated.  The  fire-eaters  everywhere  applauded.  But 
Jefferson  Davis  was  not  a  fire-eater  and  he  was  dismayed. 
In  a  letter  of  November  10,  i860,  he  counseled  delay  in  with- 
drawing from  the  Union  unless  the  lower  South  was  fully 
united  on  a  plan  of  action.1    How  different  this  was  from 

1851! 

The  lower  South,  however,  was  on  the  verge  of  being 
united.  South  Carolina  was  about  to  secede,  and  the  Gulf 
states  began  to  move  in  that  direction.  Governor  Pettus 
of  Mississippi  invited  the  congressmen  of  that  state  to  meet 
him  at  Jackson  on  November  22,  i860.  Six  of  the  seven 
were  present.  They  made  themselves  into  a  formal  meeting, 
and  Reuben  Davis  moved  to  ask  the  legislature  to  call  a  se- 
cession convention.  A  vote  was  taken.  Jefferson  Davis 
and  A.  G.  Brown,  the  other  senator,  and  L.  Q.  C.  Lamar 
voted  against  it;  the  other  three  for  it.  Pettus  cast  the  de- 
ciding vote  in  the  affirmative.  He  then  read  a  letter  from 
the  governor  of  South  Carolina  asking  whether  the  pending 
secession  ordinance  of  that  state  should  go  into  effect  at 
once  or  on  March  4,  1861.  Again  Davis  voted  for  delay, 
and  again  the  governor  cast  the  deciding  vote.  South  Caro- 
lina was  advised  to  secede  immediately.2 

Thus  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  even  able  to  impede  a  move- 
ment which  he  deplored  though  he  had  furthered.  On  De- 
cember 14,  at  Washington,  he  joined  other  Southern  con- 
gressmen in  declaring  in  favor  of  secession.  He  had  at- 
tempted to  bring  Buchanan  to  make  a  statement  of  the  right 
of  secession,  but  the  President  balked  at  this.    He  did  not 

1  Dodd,  Jefferson  Davis,  191. 

2R.  Davis,  Recollections  of  a  Mississippian,  391. 


96  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

believe  that  secession  was  right  or  that  resistance  to  seces- 
sion was  right.  He  had  gone  as  far  in  aiding  the  South  as 
he  would  go.  The  Southern  leaders  gave  up  the  hope  that 
the  North  would  acquiesce  in  secession. 

The  country  was  dismayed  by  the  coming  break-up. 
There  was  a  general  demand  for  a  compromise  that  would 
save  the  Union,  but  as  is  usual  in  politics  the  will  of  the 
people  was  not  fulfilled.  Both  houses  of  Congress  appointed 
compromise  committees.  Davis,  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  and 
Robert  Toombs  were  the  Southern  members  of  the  Senate 
committee.  Crittenden,  the  Kentucky  successor  to  Clay's 
role  of  grand  compromiser,  had  arranged  a  plan  that  was 
acceptable  to  the  South  since  it  gave  that  section  the  exten- 
sion of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  to  the  Pacific.  His 
scheme,  therefore,  was  unacceptable  to  the  North.  No  basis 
of  negotiation  could  be  found,  and  the  effort  to  prevent  dis- 
union failed.  The  North  did  not  want  a  real  compromise. 
It  could  not  afford  to  extend  the  Missouri  Compromise  line 
to  the  Pacific,  because  to  do  so  would  have  given  the  South 
a  chance  to  dominate.  In  spite  of  their  disadvantage  in 
numbers  and  resources,  the  tropic  Nordics  were  so  virile  and 
so  rapidly  re-developing  the  masterful  traits  of  the  Nordic 
race  that  it  is  not  impossible  that  they  would  have  success- 
fully defied  the  forces  of  mechanical  civilization  and  made 
the  North  a  pendant  on  the  South.  To  accomplish  this,  they 
would  have  sought  to  conquer  Mexico,  Cuba  and  northern 
South  America. 

Lincoln  was  partly  responsible  for  the  failure  of  the  com- 
promise proposals,  for  he  advised  the  Republican  leaders 
to  reject  them.  Doubtless  he  was  right.  Compromises  could 
not  go  on  being  made  every  few  years:  the  issue  had  to  be 
met  sooner  or  later,  and  there  was  no  reason  to  postpone  it 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  INDUSTRIALISM  97 

as  it  had  been  postponed  from  1820  to  1832  and  from  1832 
to  1850.  A  compromise  in  1861  would  only  have  been  the 
beginning  of  a  new  phase  of  the  great  duel  between  the  op- 
posing civilizations. 

Jefferson  Davis  worked  in  season  and  out  in  his  effort 
to  secure  a  compromise.  No  man  labored  with  more  in- 
tensity to  preserve  the  Union  than  Jefferson  Davis,  soon  to 
be  President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  He  did  not 
give  up  hope  until  the  reply  of  the  Republican  leaders  was  a 
positive  refusal  to  negotiate.  Then  he  resigned  his  seat  in 
the  Senate.  On  January  5,  1861,  he  delivered  his  apologia, 
his  justification  of  secession  in  a  speech  that  was  the  vale 
of  the  tropic  Nordics.  A  sympathetic  audience  hung  breath- 
lessly on  his  words.  Professor  Dodd  has  declared  his  fare- 
well to  be  disappointing,  but  its  somewhat  formal  defense 
of  the  exercise  of  the  right  of  secession  covered  intense  emo- 
tion. When  Davis  concluded  his  brief  address  with  touching 
eloquence  and  went  his  way,  the  old  dual  republic  of  the 
Fathers  was  at  an  end. 


VI 

THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

SECESSION  had  come.  Two  parties  struggled  for  mas- 
tery in  the  South,  secessionists  and  Unionists,  or,  to 
be  more  accurate,  immediate  secessionists  and  cooperation- 
ists,  who  wished  to  delay  until  the  South  had  agreed  on  a 
common  plan  of  action.  Everywhere  the  immediate  seces- 
sionists proved  stronger,  for  if  secession  had  to  come  the 
people  felt  that  it  might  as  well  come  at  once  as  to  be  put 
off  a  little  longer.  It  soon  became  evident  that  most  of  the 
states  of  the  lower  South  were  going  out  of  the  Union  to- 
gether. If  South  Carolina  had  not  promptly  taken* the  lead, 
secession  might  have  been  averted  for  a  considerable  time, 
but  the  movement  of  the  Palmetto  state  precipitated  the  ac- 
tion of  the  whole  lower  South.  One  commonwealth  after  an- 
other hastened  to  declare  its  independence. 

All  patriotic  men  deplored  the  disruption  and  many  even 
in  the  South  opposed  it.  The  break-up  of  the  Union  was  a 
sad  catastrophe,  one  of  the  dark  pages  of  history.  The  right 
of  states  to  leave  a  confederacy,  the  right  of  self-determina- 
tion for  the  nations  of  an  empire  is  a  doubtful  one.  The 
matter  is  practical  rather  than  theoretical.  The  United 
States  Constitution  might  specifically  allow  secession,  and 
yet  secession  might  be,  so  far  as  the  political  action  of  mil- 
lions of  men  can  be,  wrong.  The  experience  of  humanity 
shows  that  mankind  has  generally  been  far  better  off  when 

98 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  99 

organized  in  great  states  than  when  cut  up  into  numerous 
feeble  and  petty  divisions  and  that  only  grave  reasons  justify 
the  overthrow  of  unions.  Yet  there  may  be  cases  when  not 
to  divide  is  the  greater  evil. 

It  would  seem  that  the  secession  of  the  South  was  such 
a  case,  though  there  is,  of  course,  room  for  a  wide  difference 
of  opinion.  The  North  and  the  South  had  reached  a  point 
where  the  governmental  machinery  no  longer  worked,  and 
the  political  instincts  of  the  Nordic  race  suggested  a  new 
arrangement.  The  submission  of  the  South  to  sectional 
government  in  1861  would  have  postponed  secession  but 
would  not  have  remedied  the  cause  of  secession:  a  civil 
war,  possibly  even  more  disastrous  than  the  one  that  oc- 
curred, would  probably  have  been  the  final  outcome — a  war 
of  parties  rather  than  of  sections.  The  opposing  forces  in 
American  life  would  likely  have  clashed  in  military  conflict 
sooner  or  later. 

The  cause  of  secession  lay  deeper  than  slavery,  that  con- 
venient Satan  of  American  history  which  has  been  held  re- 
sponsible for  all  ills  of  our  past  life.  The  cause  of  secession 
was  the  antagonism  of  the  tropic  Nordicism  of  the  lower 
South  for  the  meddling,  non-Nordic  industrial  civilization  of 
the  North.  It  is  to  b?  observed  that  the  upper  South  did 
not  feel  this  antagonism  so  deeply:  thus  Kentucky,  Mary- 
land and  Missouri  did  not  secede  and  Virginia  seceded  so 
tardily  as  seriously  to  prejudice  the  secession  cause.  But  in 
the  lower  South,  where  the  Nordic  was  recovering  his  pri- 
meval character,  or  developing  new  characteristics,  reverting 
to  the  type  of  masterful  man  which  had  imposed  its  will  so 
long  on  the  world,  the  revulsion  against  the  mechanistic, 
egalitarian  North  was  very  strong.  For  two  generations  the 
two  great  types  of  American  life  had  been  developing  side 


100  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

by  side,  but  now  the  question  had  come  as  to  which  was  to 
prevail.  Was  the  South  to  go  its  separate  way,  since  it  could 
no  longer  hope  to  hold  its  own  in  the  Union,  or  was  it  to  be 
conquered  and  made  an  integral  part  of  the  North? 

The  South  seceded,  in  the  first  place,  because  of  the 
Nordic  instinct  of  self-government.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  a 
minority  should  bow  to  the  will  of  a  majority,  but  such  sub- 
mission may  mean  suicide.  The  issues  may  be  so  vital  that 
resistance  will  be  the  only  sane  course  to  take.  The  minority 
in  1 86 1  would  have  been  indifferent  to  the  principle  of  self- 
government  if  it  had  consented  to  the  abandonment  of  the 
policy  of  the  balance  of  power,  and  the  North  absolutely 
insisted  on  this  surrender.  Most  wars  are  caused  by  threats 
to  the  balance  of  power,  and  this  was  especially  the  case  in 
our  Civil  War.  It  was  essential  to  the  South  to  have  the 
right  to  regulate  its  domestic  concerns,  a  right  menaced  by 
the  steadily  growing  anti-slavery  agitation. 

The  bitterness  of  feeling  between  the  North  and  South 
was  such  that  it  was  beyond  reason  to  expect  that  slavery 
would  remain  unmolested.  The  North  might  have  given 
pledges — and  sincere  pledges,  too — that  it  would  not  inter- 
fere with  slavery  where  it  was  established,  but  it  must  have 
interfered.  Congress  would  have  been  driven  by  public 
sentiment  and  the  force  of  events  to  deal  with  slavery  in  the 
South.  The  Fugitive  Slave  law  would  have  been  repealed 
and  the  interstate  slave  traffic  prohibited.  The  border 
states  would  have  been  subjected  to  armed  attacks  such  as 
the  Brown  raid;  war  would  have  existed  under  the  name  of 
peace,  and  the  most  detestable  kind  of  war.  The  chaotic 
conditions  resulting  would  have  impelled  Congress  to  con- 
sider the  question  of  abolition.  Eventually  slavery  would 
have  been  abolished. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  101 

Yet  it  would  have  come  to  an  end  under  very  different 
conditions  from  those  of  1865.  When  slavery  finally  passed 
from  the  United  States,  it  did  so  only  after  one  of  the  great- 
est struggles  in  history.  The  South,  although  so  much 
weaker  than  the  North,  put  up  a  fight  that  compelled  the 
admiration  of  the  world.  The  Nordics,  rallying  to  the  de- 
fense of  the  Nordic  political  institution  of  local  self-govern- 
ment and  the  Nordic  social  and  economic  institution  of  slav- 
ery, showed  the  spirit  and  fighting  qualities  of  the  race. 
Nordicism  was  overthrown  but  it  was  not  disgraced.  But 
if  the  Southern  planters  had  been  so  tame,  so  lost  to  the 
Nordic  past  as  to  have  submitted  to  the  overthrow  of  their 
institutions  against  their  will,  they  would  have  deserved 
the  supreme  calamities  that  would  have  befallen  them.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  emancipation  was  only  a  part  of 
the  abolition  program.  If  the  South  had  remained  in  the 
Union  and  submitted  to  emancipation,  negro  suffrage  would 
have  followed  and  a  great  negro  egalitarian  movement.  The 
Gulf  states  would  have  been  lost.  The  Nordic  race  would 
have  fallen,  and  fallen  utterly.  The  consequences  of  re- 
sistance were  bitter  but  nothing  like  so  disastrous  and  de- 
moralizing as  this.  The  South  was  economically  ruined  by 
secession  and  war  but  it  was  spiritually  saved. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  South  had  much  reason  for 
its  greatly  criticized  course  of  action.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  North  had  the  best  of  arguments  for  its  refusal  to  con- 
cur in  the  right  of  secession.  No  matter  what  the  intention 
of  the  Fathers  may  have  been  in  framing  the  Constitution, 
seventy  years  of  union  had  made  the  American  nation  an 
accomplished  fact;  and  the  North  could  not  be  expected  to 
appreciate  the  dire  necessity  that  drove  the  Southern  Nor- 
dics to  secession.    The  North  had  no  such  race  problem  as 


102  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  South.  The  going  of  the  South  meant  the  wrecking  of 
the  great  republic  founded  by  Washington  and  his  fellows, 
and  Lincoln  would  have  been  weak  if  he  had  sanctioned  it. 
Being  a  strong  man,  he  prepared  for  war.  War,  indeed,  was 
the  only"  solution  of  the  matter,  for  it  was  a  situation  where 
neither  side  could  afford  to  give  way.  Because  war  is  so 
often  unnecessary  and  wrong,  we  should  not  lose  sight  of 
the  fact  that  in  rare  cases  it  is  the  single  honorable  resort. 
The  year  1861  was  an  example  of  this. 

Secession,  when  it  came,  was  the  work  of  no  group  of 
leaders  but  a  spontaneous  movement  of  the  planters,  sup- 
ported in  large  measure  by  the  small  farmers.  The  only 
state  in  which  the  secessionists  had  difficulty  was  Georgia, 
the  happiest  of  the  Southern  commonwealths.  Georgia  had 
no  such  haughty  planters  and  no  such  large,  neglected  poor 
white  population  as  Virginia  and  South  Carolina,  possibly 
the  two  least  fortunate  states  of  the  South.  Georgia  had  the 
largest  slave-owning  population  of  the  country:  in  Georgia 
the  great  majority  of  farmers  owned  modest  estates  and  held 
a  few  slaves.  It  was  a  sound,  content,  moderately  prosper- 
ous community,  originally  strongly  opposed  to  disunion. 
Many  of  the  farmers  were  still  against  secession  in  1861, 
and  the  campaign  to  control  the  state  convention  was  stirring. 
The  disunionists  were  led  by  Governor  Joseph  Brown,  Rob- 
ert Toombs  and  Howell  Cobb;  the  Unionists  or  delayers  by 
Alexander  H.  Stephens,  Herschel  V.  Johnson  and  Benjamin 
H.  Hill.  Stephens  made  a  strong  plea  for  delay,  declaring 
that  the  Constitution  provided  remedies  for  all  political  ills. 
The  influence  of  Toombs,  however,  added  to  the  logic  of 
the  situation  proved  decisive,  and  Georgia  seceded. 

Toombs  was  the  only  Southern  leader  who  had  much  part 
in  bringing  about  secession.     South  Carolina  would  have 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  103 

moved  without  reference  to  Rhett;  Yancey  had  so  little 
immediate  influence  in  Alabama  that  he  could  not  get  him- 
self elected  to  the  Confederate  convention.  Davis  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  secession  of  Mississippi.  Florida  and 
Louisiana  acted  spontaneously  and  apparently  without  any 
leadership  whatever.  But  if  Toombs  had  opposed  seces- 
sion Georgia  might  have  delayed  so  long  that  the  disunion 
plan  would  have  broken  down. 

The  action  of  Georgia  made  secession  immediately  suc- 
cessful; it  was  no  longer  a  question  whether  or  no  the  lower 
South  would  follow  South  Carolina  as  a  unit,  but  whether 
the  North  could  hold  the  border  states  in  the  Union.  In  the 
first  days  of  1861,  the  future  of  the  secession  movement 
seemed  problematical,  but  a  few  weeks  later  it  was  sweeping 
the  South  like  fire.  Later,  Virginia,  North  Carolina, 
Arkansas  and  Tennessee  joined  the  lower  South,  while 
Maryland,  Kentucky  and  Missouri  remained  in  the  Union, 
snatched  as  brands  from  the  burning.  The  republic  was 
torn  asunder. 

Organization  of  a  new  national  government  followed  hard 
on  the  action  of  the  individual  states.  Deputies  from  the 
first  six  seceding  commonwealths  met  at  Montgomery,  the 
capital  of  Alabama,  on  February  4,  1861.  Montgomery  was 
a  picturesque  little  town  perched  on  high  bluffs  overhanging 
the  beautiful  Alabama  River;  its  main  street  ran  from  the 
water  to  the  capitol,  a  mile  away,  and  sent  out  spurs  of  side 
streets  on  which  verandaed  residences  stood  amidst  old- 
fashioned  Southern  gardens.  The  town  served  well  enough 
for  a  state  center,  but  its  two  primitive  hotels  and  its  village 
atmosphere  somewhat  handicapped  it  as  the  capital  of  a 
nation.  Yet  it  had  the  great  advantage  of  being  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  lower  South,  midway  between  Charleston  and 


104  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

New  Orleans,  and  the  Confederates  would  have  done  well  to 
make  it  the  permanent  capital. 

The  convention  represented  the  two  parties  existing  at 
that  moment  in  the  South,  willing  secessionists  and  unwilling 
secessionists.  That  is,  one  party  looked  forward  with  con- 
fidence to  the  Promised  Land  of  a  separate  national  existence, 
while  the  other  gazed  with  the  dismay  of  Lot's  wife  at  the  re- 
ceding Sodom  of  Washington.  In  January,  1861,  the  ardent 
secessionists  had  been  in  the  saddle  as  state  after  state  left 
the  Union.  But  now,  in  February,  the  reaction  had  come, 
and  the  lukewarm  secessionists  actually  found  themselves  in 
control  of  the  convention.  This  was  largely  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  delegates  were  mature  politicians,  and  they  did  not 
want  disunion.  What  they  wanted  was  a  compromise,  and 
many  of  them  looked  on  secession  merely  as  a  means  to 
bring  about  a  compromise  which  would  gain  substantial  ad- 
vantages for  the  South.  They  would  have  welcomed  over- 
tures from  the  North,  and  if  a  prompt  and  emphatic  promise 
of  non-interference  with  slavery  had  come  from  Washington 
it  is  not  improbable  that  the  secession  movement  would  have 
broken  down. 

But  no  such  security  could  be  given  by  the  North,  and  the 
convention  reluctantly  proceeded  to  form  a  government.  In 
the  absence  of  Yancey,  defeated  for  the  Confederate  con- 
vention by  a  silly  self-denying  ordinance  of  the  Alabama 
secession  convention,  Rhett,  Toombs  and  Howell  Cobb  were 
the  leading  figures.  Yet  they  had  no  great  influence  with 
the  delegates.  Rhett,  the  father  of  secession,  the  prophet 
who  had  at  last  come  into  his  own,  was  so  far  from  being  in 
control  that  he  was  actually  regarded  with  suspicion  by  the 
convention.  Toombs  and  Cobb,  who  had  brought  about  the 
secession  of  Georgia,  were  likewise  largely  without  power. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  105 

The  absence  of  Yancey,  that  soul  of  flame,  that  being  devoid 
of  the  fear  of  consequences,  was  greatly  felt.  He  might 
have  stirred  the  crowd  of  hesitating,  compromising  dele- 
gates into  decisive  action.  It  was  the  great  opportunity  of 
Toombs's  life,  but  he  did  not  rise  to  it.  The  result  was  that 
the  convention  was  conciliatory  and  dilatory  in  a  situation 
calling  for  strong  and  immediate  doing.  It  failed  to  see 
that  the  Rubicon  had  been  passed  and  that  there  was  now 
no  turning  back.  It  still  hoped  to  turn  back  to  the  Union, 
and  for  this  reason  it  appeased  the  Unionists  and  flouted  the 
secessionists.  What  it  particularly  desired  was  to  present 
a  united  front,  as  if  such  a  thing  could  be  hoped  for  in  a 
revolution. 

As  the  delegates  would  not  trust  the  secession  leaders, 
Rhett,  Toombs  and  Cobb,  they  were  hampered  by  lack  of 
leadership  from  the  beginning.  Cobb  was  elected  president 
of  the  convention,  which  removed  him  from  the  floor. 
Toombs  was  distrusted  as  being  an  aspirant  to  the  headship 
of  the  government.  Other  men  of  mark  in  the  convention 
were  few.  Actually,  the  most  powerful  member  of  the  con- 
vention was  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  who  was  not  even  a 
reluctant  secessionist  but  a  Unionist  who  had  submitted  to 
the  inevitable.  He  afterward  declared  that  he  accepted  a 
seat  in  the  convention  solely  in  order  to  advocate  the  adop- 
tion of  the  United  States  Constitution.1  His  influence  was 
thoroughly  unfortunate:  it  had  the  effect  of  arresting  the 
political  development  of  the  secession  movement  and  binding 
it  to  precedents  unsuitable  to  the  emergency. 

Stephens  was  the  great  prophet  of  the  strict  construction- 
ists, and  the  result  of  his  predominance  was  that  the  dele- 
gates spent  five  fateful  weeks,  which  should  have  been  de- 

XA.  H.  Stephens,  Pictorial  History   of  the  United  States,  588. 


106  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

voted  to  war  preparations,  in  constitutional  debates  in  imita- 
tion of  the  convention  of  1787.  A  provisional  constitution 
was  adopted  and  a  provisional  President  and  Vice  President 
were  elected.  Then  it  would  seem  the  constitution-mongers 
might  have  halted  until  a  more  convenient  season.  Not 
so:  the  convention  passed  on  to  the  work  of  manufactur- 
ing a  permanent  constitution  and  installing  a  permanent 
government. 

This  finality  was  slightly  premature  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  the  United  States  government  regarded  the  whole  pro- 
ceedings at  Montgomery  as  illegal  and  was  preparing  to  re- 
sort to  force  to  suppress  the  new  republic.  But  idealists 
such  as  Stephens  are  seldom  disturbed  by  reality.  Theories 
have  for  these  political  Christian  Scientists  the  actuality  that 
hard  fact  has  for  other  men:  their  one  concern  is  that  plan 
shall  conform  to  ideal;  if  it  does  so  they  disregard  the  beat- 
ing of  externality  on  their  dream  world.  In  the  worst  crises 
of  the  Civil  War,  Stephens  wasted  his  time  in  denouncing  the 
constitutional  violations  of  a  government  whose  existence 
depended  wholly  on  the  bayonets  of  the  protecting  army. 

The  result  of  Stephens's  ascendency  over  the  throng  of 
delegates  who  were  strongly  desirous  of  getting  back  to  the 
Union  was  the  adoption  of  the  United  States  Constitution. 
With  some  changes,  it  became  the  decalogue  of  the  Confed- 
eracy. A  few  improvements  were  introduced.  The  Presi- 
dent was  elected  for  six  years  and  was  ineligible  for  re- 
election. Cabinet  members  were  allowed  to  speak  in  Con- 
gress. There  were  some  minor  differences.  But  the  line 
of  demarcation  between  the  powers  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment and  the  rights  of  states  was  not  laid  down,  with  the 
result  that  at  the  first  considerable  exertion  of  authority  on 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  107 

the  part  of  the  President  the  cry  was  raised  that  the  con- 
stitution was  being  violated. 

Imitation  was  the  order  of  the  day;  nothing  was  original. 
Confederate  States  of  America  was  the  official  title  of  the 
republic;  and  when  an  executive  mansion  was  obtained  it 
inevitably  became  the  "White  House  of  the  Confederacy." 
Not  Green  or  Yellow  or  Purple,  but  White!  The  revolu- 
tionists, many  of  whom  were  ex-congressmen,  already  re- 
gretted the  fleshpots  of  Washington.  They  were  not  young, 
vigorous  fire-eaters,  but  tired  politicians.  They  were  con- 
servative: at  least,  they  were  not  creative.  That  was  the 
first  tragedy  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 

At  length  Stephens  was  satisfied  that  the  new  govern- 
ment was  sufficiently  orthodox  to  receive  his  approval,  which 
was,  indubitably,  a  great  triumph  for  the  secessionists.  Cer- 
tainly, they  should  have  felt  it  to  be  so:  they  had  sacrificed 
much  for  that  same  approval.  And  the  approval  was  a  very 
temporary  matter,  for  in  less  than  a  year  Stephens  was  in 
violent  opposition  to  the  government  he  had  done  so  much 
to  establish.  It  would  have  been  far  better  if  the  secession- 
ists had  gone  their  own  way,  defying  opposition  or  over- 
awing it,  instead  of  attempting  the  impossible  task  of  unify- 
ing every  shade  of  opinion  in  support  of  the  revolutionary 
government. 

The  Republicans,  just  establishing  themselves  in  Wash- 
ington, must  have  rejoiced  at  the  folly  of  the  Confederates. 
The  Constitution,  as  they  well  knew,  was  their  chief  weak- 
ness: it  was  a  bar  to  the  ruthless  prosecution  of  a  great  war. 
They  were  hampered  by  it  until  they  cleverly  devised  the 
theory  of  the  presidential  war  powers  as  a  means  of  getting 
around  it.     Likewise,  in  191 7,  the  Constitution  was  sus- 


108  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

pended  and  a  temporary  dictatorship  established  to  meet 
a  crisis  far  less  dangerous  than  that  of  1861. 

The  disunionists  had  no  such  difficulty  to  surmount.  They 
went  into  their  movement  unhampered.  They  thus  had  an 
admirable  opportunity  to  devise  a  provisional  constitution 
of  elastic  powers,  leaving  the  question  of  the  eternal  organic 
law  until  independence  had  been  won.  It  was  a  chance  to 
practice  initiative  in  politics,  to  provide  a  system  correspond- 
ing to  actual  needs.  What  the  South  needed  at  the  moment 
was  a  simple  parliamentary  government  that  would  keep  the 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  planter  politicians,  a  one-chamber 
Congress  with  strong  committees  and  an  army  commander 
responsible  to  Congress.  The  strength  of  the  South  lay  in 
the  Nordic  planters,  who  formed  a  large  oligarchy.  They 
were  the  makers  of  the  new  republic  and  they  should  have 
remained  its  rulers. 

But  the  worn  politicians  in  the  convention,  used  to  the 
institutions  of  the  United  States,  did  not  rise  to  any  original- 
ity. In  obedience  to  habit  and  in  response  to  the  outcries 
of  Stephens  that  the  government  must  be  according  to  the 
Fathers — that  it  must  be  a  reproduction  of  the  perfect 
United  States  model — they  set  up  a  single  ruler  over  them- 
selves. That  is,  they  established  the  monarchical  form  of 
republic,  like  the  United  States,  which  does  well  enough 
when  a  great  leader  appears  but  which  is  the  worst  possible 
kind  of  government  when  the  strength  of  a  country  and  its 
prosperity  depend  not  on  an  individual  but  a  class.  The 
Nordic  planters,  represented  by  politicians  who  did  not  rep- 
resent their  spirit,  thus  committed  political  suicide.  They 
made  a  one-man  government  and  thereby  paved  the  way 
for  their  downfall. 

A  king  was  demanded,  and  the  question  now  was  who 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  109 

should  be  Saul.  No  doubt  a  number  of  men  briefly  hoped. 
Alabama  made  overtures  in  Yancey's  behalf  to  Virginia, 
which,  as  hesitating  on  the  brink  of  secession  but  not  yet 
seceding,  was  particularly  powerful,  but  the  Virginia  poli- 
ticians did  not  favor  the  fire-eater.1  The  convention  of  luke- 
warmists  never  even  considered  him.  The  very  fact  that 
he  had  precipitated  secession  damned  him  in  their  eyes. 
Rhett  felt  that  his  claims  were  paramount  and  may  have 
been  sanguine  for  a  moment.  Secession  had  confirmed 
his  superior  foresight.  What  he  had  long  preached  had 
finally  come  to  pass.  Who  could  better  care  for  the  infant 
nation  than  its  own  father?  Unfortunately  for  himself, 
Rhett  was  in  a  false  position.  South  Carolina  had  led  the 
way  in  secession.  If  that  state  now  brought  forward  a 
candidate  for  the  presidency,  it  could  not  escape  the  imputa- 
tion of  self-interest.  If  the  other  states  were  willing  to 
evince  their  gratitude  by  elevating  a  South  Carolinian  to 
the  chief  magistracy,  Rhett's  ambition  would  be  gratified 
and  the  secession  cause  would  be  led  by  the  original  se- 
cessionist. If  the  other  states  did  not  so  choose,  South  Caro- 
lina could  do  nothing. 

The  other  states  did  not  want  the  original  secessionist. 
With  Rhett  as  President  there  could  be  no  hope  of  compro- 
mise and  return  to  the  Union,  and  this  was  what  a  majority 
of  the  convention  desired.  The  South  Carolina  delegation 
was  inclined  to  give  the  prize  to  Georgia,  the. largest  of 
the  seceding  states  and  the  most  lukewarm:  Georgia  must 
be  bound  at  all  hazards.  And  there  is  a  possibility  that 
Georgia  could  have  named  the  President  if  it  had  united  on 
Robert  Toombs,  the  foremost  all-round  public  man  of  the 
South.      The   Georgians,  however,  were  divided  between 

*J.  W.  Dubose,  Life  and  Letters  of  William  Lowndes  Yancey,  586. 


110  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Toombs  and  Cobb  and  even  thought  of  Stephens.  T.  R.  R. 
Cobb,  a  Georgia  delegate,  declares  that  Alabama,  Missis- 
sippi and  Florida  were  for  Jefferson  Davis;  Louisiana  and 
Georgia  for  Cobb;  and  South  Carolina  divided  between 
Cobb  and  Davis.1  This  statement  probably  somewhat  ex- 
aggerates Cobb's  strength. 

The  South  Carolina  delegation  seems  to  have  decided  the 
matter.  Rhett  had  no  candidate  and  he  knew  that  his  own 
election  was  hopeless.  Robert  Barnwell  and  James  Chest- 
nut, Jr.,  late  senator,  actively  supported  Davis,  while  Law- 
rence Keitt  preferred  Cobb.  Barnwell  approached  his  kins- 
man, Rhett,  in  Davis's  behalf.  He  admitted  that  the 
Mississippian  was  not  a  great  man  but  thought  that  his  force 
of  character  would  lend  weight  to  the  government.2  Rhett 
demurred.  He  now  disliked  and  distrusted  Davis.  What 
particularly  moved  his  misgivings  was  Davis's  reluctance 
in  the  secession  movement,  for,  singular  as  it  may  seem 
to-day,  Davis  was  still  believed  by  many  to  be  a  Unionist.  In 
185 1,  Davis  had  stood  for  secession:  in  1861,  he  worked 
strenuously  to  stave  it  off.  Rhett  was  angered*by  a  rumor 
that  he  had  shed  tears  on  leaving  the  Senate.  In  the  end, 
Barnwell  wrung  a  reluctant  consent  from  Rhett.  Almost 
at  the  same  time,  Florida,  Alabama  and  Louisiana  declared 
for  Davis. 

On  the  night  preceding  the  election  the  state  delegations 
conferred  separately.  A  rumor  that  Georgia  preferred 
Cobb  to  Toombs  seems  to  have  ended  the  latter 's  chances.3 
Cobb  never  really  had  a  chance.  The  next  morning  the 
Georgia  delegates  were  dumbfounded   to  hear  that   four 

1  Southern  History   Association  Publications,  9,   277. 

"Battles  and  Leaders  of  the  Civil  War,  1,  101. 

3  Johnston  and  Browne,  Life  of  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  390. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  111 

states  were  for  Davis.  This  meant  his  election.  Toombs, 
who  expected  to  be  chosen,  was  incredulous  and  sent  out 
to  confirm  the  news.  When  this  was  found  to  be  true, 
the  Georgians  decided  to  make  the  election  unanimous.  In 
such  fashion,  and  not  without  some  difference  of  opinion, 
Jefferson  Davis  was  chosen  provisional  President  of  the 
Confederacy. 

Why  was  he  elected?  He  was  not  present  and  he  made 
not  the  slightest  effort  to  obtain  the  office.  His  election 
was  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  the  Southern 
leader  in  the  Senate  and  a  debater  of  power  and  resource. 
But  Toombs  had  been  almost  equally  prominent  in  the 
Senate  and  he  had  other  qualifications  which  Davis  lacked. 
What  was  mainly  determinative  was  Davis's  military  repu- 
tation. While  the  majority  of  delegates  hoped  that  seces- 
sion would  proceed  without  war,  they  yet  feared  that 
war  would  come  and  wanted  a  soldier  for  a  leader.  Buena 
Vista  and  four  years  of  the  portfolio  of  War  seemed  con- 
clusive to  them.  They  did  not  doubt  that  an  executive 
with  military  training  was  the  man  for  the  place. 

Yet  another  element  entered  in  the  matter.  What  did 
most  to  defeat  Toombs  was  the  fact  that  he  was  a  secession- 
ist, that  he  was  believed  to  be  opposed  to  compromise.  Now, 
Davis  had  worked  for  a  compromise  to  the  last  possible 
moment  and  had  resigned  his  seat  in  the  Senate  only  with 
much  reluctance.  The  luke  war  mists,  then,  favored  Davis 
because  they  still  hoped  that  it  was  possible  to  come  to 
some  terms  with  the  United  States  government  and  they 
thought  that  Davis,  the  compromiser,  would  do  all  in  his 
power  to  effect  that  desired  consummation. 

Rhett  and  Toombs  were  both  bitterly  disappointed,  es- 
pecially Toombs,  who  had  hoped  until  the  last.    Neither 


112  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

man  entirely  recovered,  though  Toombs  played  a  part  of 
some  importance  in  later  events.  No  one  regrets  that  Rhett 
was  passed  by.  He  was  a  great  thinker,  but  he  was  a 
realist  and  unpopular — cold,  saturnine,  scornful  of  democ- 
racy, indifferent  to  the  past  of  America,  planning  the  tropic 
empire  of  the  South,  careless  of  the  means  by  which  that  em- 
pire was  to  come  into  being.  His  powerful  intellect  went 
for  nought,  possibly  because  of  his  unpolitical  temperament, 
possibly  because  of  his  lack  of  humanness. 

It  is  otherwise  with  the  more  lovable  Toombs.  The 
South  has  always  tended  to  regret  that  he  was  not  chosen. 
He  was  a  man  of  great  ability  and  of  force  of  character. 
He  was  not  only  a  lawyer  and  orator  but  an  economist  and 
financier.  His  robust  health  enabled  him  to  do  an  in- 
credible amount  of  work.  He  was  a  man  of  action,  if 
not  a  soldier;  a  popular  leader  in  a  greater  degree  than 
any  other  Southerner;  and,  above  all,  a  bold  revolutionist, 
ready  for  daring  measures.  Somewhat  unconsciously,  the 
convention  rejected  this  red-blooded  business  man  and  prac- 
tical politician  for  the  neurotic  and  scholarly  Davis,  who  was 
much  less  able  to  endure  the  tremendous  labors  of  the  head 
of  a  revolutionary  government.  Opinion  was  by  no  means 
unanimous  as  to  his  fitness  for  the  office.  T.  R.  R.  Cobb 
said  of  him,  "He  is  not  great  iniany  sense  of  the  term.  The 
power  of  will  has  made  him  what  he  is."  *  But  this  is  to 
say  that  he  was  a  great  character,  if  not  a  great  mind.  His- 
tory has  been  much  more  made  by  great  characters  than 
by  great  minds. 

It  is  probable  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  the  best  choice 
the  convention  could  have  made.  Toombs  was  able,  but 
he  had  the  cardinal  defects  of  a  violent  temper  and  a  want 

*  Southern   History    Association  Publications,   9,    281. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  113 

of  self-control.  His  habits  were  convivial,  a  fact  that  is 
said  to  have  influenced  the  convention.  He  had  amateurish 
military  conceptions  which  he  would,  no  doubt,  have  sought 
to  force  on  his  generals.  All  in  all,  Davis  was  the  flower 
of  the  field  that  included  no  first-rate  individuals,  but  only 
Toombs,  Cobb,  Rhett,  Yancey  and  Stephens.  The  mistake 
the  secessionists  made  was  not  in  their  presidential  selec- 
tion but  in  having  a  President  of  the  United  States  model 
at  all.  Davis  was  the  best  man  they  could  have  chosen 
in  the  absence  of  a  great  leader,  but  they  should  not  have 
had  an  all-powerful  chief  magistrate.  If  they  had  kept  the 
reins  in  their  own  hands,  they  might  have  waited  for  the 
great  man  to  appear.  As  it  was,  they  conferred  the  pallium 
on  one  who  did  wonderfully  well  in  many  ways  but  who 
lacked  the  genius  qualities  necessary  for  success. 

The  imitation  of  the  United  States  government  was  as 
unnecessary  as  it  was  unfortunate.  While  the  disunionists 
of  1 86 1  did  not  measure  up  to  the  generation  of  Calhoun 
and  Polk,  the  coterie  that  included  Toombs,  Rhett,  Cobb, 
Barnwell,  Yancey,  B.  H.  Hill,  Wigfall,  Benjamin,  Slidell, 
Keitt,  Jacob  Thompson,  A.  G.  Brown,  Hunter,  Wise,  Vance 
and  Breckinridge  was  abundantly  able  to  have  conducted 
a  national  government  and  devised  a  foreign  policy.  Yet 
the  delegates,  in  obedience  to  an  overmastering  impulse 
of  imitation,  imposed  the  monarchical  United  States  Con- 
stitution on  the  new-born  country.  Possibly  they  did  not 
realize  that  they  were  making  the  Confederacy  a  one-man 
government,  that  in  time  of  war  Congress  would  necessarily 
sink  to  be  a  mere  adjunct  of  the  executive,  who  would  over- 
shadow everything.  Signs  are  not  wanting  that  the  Con- 
federate leaders  thought  that  Jefferson  Davis  would  take 
advice,  that  a  group  of  men  might  exercise  control  through 


114  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

him.  If  so,  they  were  soon  undeceived.  Jefferson  Davis 
was  the  last  possible  man  to  take  dictation.  Very  quickly 
the  leaders  found  themselves  relegated  to  seats  in  a  Con- 
gress whose  deliberations  no  one  regarded  or  hanging  around 
anterooms  seeking  to  obtain  favors  from  a  chief  who  coldly 
let  them  understand  his  complete  mastery. 

Yet  the  cup  of  folly  was  not  full.  Not  satisfied  with 
having  legislated  themselves  to  nothingness,  the  delegates 
went  on  to  choose  as  Vice  President  Alexander  H.  Stephens, 
the  leading  Southern  opponent  of  secession.  More  hen- 
brained  expediency  was  never  seen.  A  dyspeptic  is  the 
last  person  to  lead  a  revolution,  because  revolutions  re- 
quire optimism;  but  the  dyspeptic  Stephens  had  been 
dragged  into  this  revolution  sorely  against  his  will.  He 
reluctantly  consented  to  join  a  movement  in  which  he  did 
not  believe  and  was  rewarded  for  his  lack  of  faith  by 
being  elected  to  the  second  place  in  the  government  over 
the  heads  of  real  secessionists  after  being  allowed  to  dictate 
the  form  of  government.  The  delegates  thought  that  the 
election  of  Stephens  was  a  clever  stroke,  that  it  bound  the 
lukewarmists  and  Unionists  to  the  Confederacy.  What  it 
actually  accomplished  was  the  handicapping  of  the  revolu- 
tion by  a  man  who  did  not  believe  in  it  and  who  never  really 
became  a  Confederate  until  the  end  of  the  Confederacy, 
when,  there  being  no  longer  any  use  in  it,  he  made  an  ef- 
fective defense  of  the  right  of  secession.  Few  more  futile  be- 
ings have  ever  lived. 

Stephens  was  a  lawyer  and  politician  of  ability  and  a 
singularly  high  and  honorable  man,  but  his  mentality  had 
been  arrested  in  1850.  The  compromise  of  that  year  was 
his  idea  of  statesmanship.  He  did  not  comprehend  that 
the  South  in  1861  had  all  the  constitutional  protection  pos- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  115 

sible  under  the  circumstances — that  legal  guarantees  were 
worthless  in  face  of  the  Northern  conviction  of  the  un- 
righteousness of  slavery — and  hugged  the  delusion  until 
Appomattox  that  the  Southern  states  might  return  to  the 
Union  if  given  additional  pledges.  This  was  the  idea  of 
the  Confederate  convention  in  the  early  spring  of  1861, 
but  it  was  promptly  abandoned  by  practical  men  after  the 
bombardment  of  Sumter.  He  continually  opposed  the  most 
necessary  military  measures,  such  as  conscription,  and 
actually  advanced  the  lunacy  that  the  army  should  be  dis- 
banded in  winter  and  reassembled  in  spring.  He  strength- 
ened the  states'  rights  opposition  to  the  national  government 
in  every  way  and  worked  ardently  to  foster  dissatisfaction 
with  the  administration.  All  in  all,  he  probably  did  as 
much  as  any  individual,  save  Grant  and  Sherman,  to  bring 
about  the  fall  of  the  Confederacy.  So  much  for  the  great 
policy  of  conciliating  the  opponents  of  secession  by  electing 
their  head  Vice  President! 

But  what  of  the  man  who  was  given  the  chief  place? 
Jefferson  Davis  was  in  his  rose  garden  at  Brier  field  when 
a  messenger  came  with  the  news  of  his  election.  He  stood 
white  and  silent,  torn  by  conflicting  emotions,  overwhelmed 
and,  perhaps,  a  little  elated.  He  tells  us  that  he  was  de- 
pressed and  disappointed,  that  it  had  been  his  ambition 
to  command  the  Mississippi  troops,  a  command  to  which 
he  had  already  been  appointed.  However,  a  nature  so  self- 
confident  and  ambitious  could  not  but  have  thrilled  at 
the  vista  of  glory  and  grandeur  that  opened  before  his 
eyes.  He  saw  himself  the  founder  of  a  new  nation,  sur- 
passing Washington — a  great  historic  figure. 

What  was  the  man  as  we  see  him  after  more  than  six 
decades?     His  contemporaries  could  not  accurately  meas- 


116  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

ure  him.  They  put  the  burden  on  him  in  full  trust  in  his 
brain  and  character:  on  him  depended  the  future  of  Nordic 
civilization — whether  it  was  to  recrudesce  and  triumph  over 
industrialism  or  wither,  like  Jonah's  gourd,  before  the  forces 
of  modern  life.  Was  receding  Nordicism,  slowly  being 
strangled  by  industry  and  equality,  to  emerge  once  more 
as  a  world  power  or  had  it  come  to  the  end?  It  depended 
on  the  newly  elected  President. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  been  many  things:  soldier,  planter, 
senator,  Secretary  of  War.  He  had  shone  conspicuous  in  all. 
As  a  soldier  he  had  won  fame  at  Buena  Vista.  As  a  planter, 
he  had  built  up  a  fine  estate  and  trained  model  slaves.  As 
Secretary  of  War,  he  had  increased  the  efficiency  of  the 
United  States  army.  As  a  senator,  he  had  come  to  be  the 
foremost  debater  on  the  Southern  side.  A  brave  man, 
physically  and  morally,  Davis  would  have  made  an  ad- 
mirable brigade  or  division  commander.  He  had  executive 
capacity.  He  was  a  splendid  public  speaker,  and  his  in- 
formation was  very  varied  and  very  deep.  He  was  well 
educated,  with  a  cool,  logical,  clear  brain.  In  many 
respects,  he  was  a  good  choice  for  head  of  the  new 
government. 

His  chief  deficiency,  as  has  been  mentioned  before,  was 
as  a  politician.  Jefferson  Davis  lacked  cunning,  foresight, 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  all  of  which  together  make  up 
the  politician.  Politically,  he  was  doctrinaire,  not  prac- 
tical. Satisfied  of  the  rightness  of  his  position,  he  was 
sometimes  surprised  by  the  unhappy  results  of  his 
acts.  He  had  striven  for  a  decade  to  accomplish  certain 
great  political  objects,  and  had  failed.  It  had  been 
his  main  ambition  to  win  territory  for  the  South.  Accom- 
plishment had  not  followed.    In  the  contest  of  wits  he  had 


THE  GREA'T  ADVENTURE  117 

proved  inferior  to  Douglas,  who  had  cozened  him  into  ap- 
proving the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill.  That  mistake  had  ruined 
everything.  Kansas  was  not  won  for  the  South  and  the 
Missouri  Compromise  line  was  not  extended  to  the  Pacific. 
Davis  had  sought  to  write  the  Dred  Scott  opinion  into  the 
Democratic  platform  of  i860,  but  again  he  had  failed.  He 
had  attempted  to  thwart  Douglas  and  yet  prevent  the  elec- 
tion of  Lincoln:  he  Jiad  merely  insured  Lincoln's  suc- 
cess by  splitting  his  own  party.  He  had  made  great  efforts 
to  avert  secession  by  an  eleventh-hour  compromise,  but 
in  vain.  In  everything  in  which  order,  logic  and  strength 
of  will  lead  to  success — as  in  debate  and  administration — 
he  had  been  successful:  in  everything  in  which  mastery  of 
men,  cold  calculation  and  shrewd  manipulation  are  needful 
he  had  failed.  He  could  not  make  the  marionettes  dance  to 
his  bidding. 

In  the  superlative  effort  of  his  life  he  also  failed.  Once 
more  it  was  his  inability  as  a  political  leader  that  played 
a  large  part  in  his  undoing.  No  sooner  had  the  planter 
politicians  set  him  up  over  them  than  they  turned  against 
him.  They  hated  the  government  they  themselves  had  made, 
and  Davis  was  not  the  man  who  could  bind  them  to  him- 
self by  chains  of  personal  loyalty  stronger  than  any  con- 
stitutional right.  They  failed  him.  No  doubt  Davis  made 
mistakes,  but  any  one  in  his  position  would  have  made  mis- 
takes. It  was  the  part  of  the  politicians  who  had  elected 
him  to  stand  by  him.  But  foremost  in  criticism  and  de- 
nunciation was  Stephens,  who  was  mainly  responsible  for 
the  establishment  of  the  United  States  Constitution  over 
the  Confederacy  and  who,  the  moment  the  President  as- 
serted the  large  powers  supposed  to  be  conferred  on  him 
by  that  instrument,  raised  the  cry  of  unconstitutionality. 


118  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Thus,  Jefferson  Davis  from  the  first  was  in  the  difficult  posi- 
tion of  a  ruler  who  exerts  legal  powers  grudged  by  his 
subordinates  and  who  lacks  the  address  to  win  those  sub- 
ordinates to  his  support.  For  this  reason  he  was  forever 
being  driven  to  fall  back  on  his  "constitutional  rights," 
while  being  denounced  as  a  violator  of  the  constitution 
himself. 

What  was  the  balance  of  his  virtues  and  defects?  He  had 
great  positive  virtues:  dignity,  honor,  courage,  industry. 
He  was  single-minded  in  his  devotion  to  his  cause.  He  had 
a  sound  military  education  and  a  considerable  talent  for 
war.  He  was,  ordinarily,  a  good  judge  of  men,  though  liable 
to  make  bad  mistakes  at  times.  He  had  too  much  rather 
than  too  little  will:  his  determination  overstayed  the  con- 
sent of  fate.  He  was  apt  to  stand  rocklike  on  some  wrong 
decision.  He  had  administrative  ability.  He  inspired  re- 
spect, though  not  affection  or  even  liking. 

His  faults  were  those  of  a  bookish,  solitary  nature  which 
has  not  been  toughened  by  the  shocks  of  life.  He  was  sensi- 
tive, vain,  egotistical,  open  to  flattery.  Men  such  as  Lincoln 
who  have  risen  to  greatness  in  spite  of  a  hostile  environ- 
ment discount  vanity:  one  rebuff  more  or  less  means  little 
to  those  accustomed  to  rebuffs.  But  thin-skinned,  undis- 
ciplined natures  of  the  type  of  Jefferson  Davis  are  maddened 
by  reproof  and  shriveled  by  ridicule.  Used  to  praise  and 
consideration,  they  look  on  criticism  as  a  sort  of  crime.  Pride 
is  their  shipwreck:  they  prefer  ruin  to  admitting  a  mis- 
take. And  in  Davis's  case  sensitiveness  led  to  jealousy;  he 
stood  out  for  his  full  rights  and  privileges  when  he  would 
have  done  well  to  rid  himself  of  some  of  his  responsibilities. 
Yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  in  judging  him,  that  his  posi- 
tion was  a  terrible  one,  ground,  as  he  was,  between  the 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  119 

millstones  of  a  North  denouncing  him  as  a  traitor  and  a 
South  proclaiming  him  an  autocrat.  He  was  never  popular, 
never  the  head  of  a  party.  He  always  stood  much  alone. 
It  is  not  to  be  wondered,  then,  that  he  gave  way  some- 
times to  his  feelings,  but  that  he  endured  so  much  abuse 
and  disloyalty  with  so  few  surrenders  to  human  weakness. 
In  spite  of  his  temperament,  he  developed  much  patience, 
much  capacity  to  bear  detraction,  much  forbearance.  He 
won  some  notable  victories  over  his  failings.  But  he  could 
not  quite  rise  to  the  heroic  level  demanded  by  his  diffi- 
culties ;  he  could  not  become  the  leader  to  inspire  a  despond- 
ing nation;  he  could  not  become  the  genius  able  to  uphold 
a  losing  cause.  He  failed  in  a  position  where  only  a  very 
great  man  could  have  succeeded. 

At  the  time  of  his  election  to  the  presidency,  Jefferson 
Davis  was  not  well  known  to  the  masses  in  the  South. 
For  this  reason,  possibly,  his  election  was  received  with 
much  applause.  He  was  the  man  of  mystery,  of  whom 
everything  was  expected.  He  did  nothing  to  dampen  this 
enthusiastic  estimate.  Always  dignified,  he  charmed  the 
people  as  he  addressed  them,  American-fashion,  from  the 
rear  platform  of  the  train  that  bore  him  to  Montgomery. 
His  slim,  boyish,  graceful  figure,  martially  erect,  and  his 
handsome,  clear-cut  features  made  him  hosts  of  admirers, 
as  well  as  the  music  of  his  oratory.  In  appearance  he  was 
now  at  his  best,  for  his  was  a  face  peculiarly  fitted  to  ex- 
press the  full  vigor  of  manhood.  The  heavy,  square  chin, 
thin  lips,  high  cheek  bones,  hollow  jaws,  broad  forehead, 
beautifully  formed  aquiline  nose  and  long  skull  were  typi- 
cally Nordic,  while  the  coloring  of  skin,  eyes  and  hair  showed 
the  dark  Welsh  breed.  His  face,  indeed,  was  impressive 
and  unusual.    Pollard  speaks  of  his  "wizard  physiognomy." 


120  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

The  crowds  that  flocked  to  the  stations  to  hear  him,  in 
daytime  and  in  the  glare  of  torchlight  at  night,  were  in  a 
holiday  mood,  for  this  matter  of  nation-making  was  a 
pleasant  excitement.  Sometimes  the  new  President  de- 
lighted them  with  confident  words,  but  he  was  too  clear- 
sighted and  too  honest  to  be  very  cheering,  and  he  told  the 
clamorous  throngs  that  a  long  war  lay  ahead  of  them.  It 
was  springtime  in  the  land  of  magnolias,  and  the  people 
did  not  believe  him.  Was  there  any  doubt  of  the  right  of  a 
sovereign  state  to  secede? 

At  Montgomery  he  was  met  with  enthusiasm,  for  the 
planter  politicians  did  not  yet  realize  how  they  had  stultified 
themselves.  A  great  crowd  marched  behind  him  up  the 
mile-long  street  to  the  capitol,  where  Yancey  himself  ex- 
tended a  formal  welcome  with  the  statement  that  the  man 
and  the  hour  had  met.  At  the  inauguration  next  day,  by 
a  singular  irony  in  the  light  of  what  was  to  follow,  Rhett 
delivered  the  address.  Thus  the  father  of  secession  crowned 
the  monarch  he  was  soon  to  disown.  This  was  Rhett 's  last 
great  appearance.  He,  the  most  unusual  public  man  of 
his  day,  ran  for  Congress  in  1863  and  was  defeated.  Such 
was  the  end  of  his  tragic  career. 

Davis's  brief  inaugural  was  a  plea  for  peace.  "War," 
he  declared  in  sounding  tones,  "would  be  a  policy  so  detri- 
mental to  the  civilized  world,  the  Northern  states  included, 
that  it  could  not  be  dictated  by  even  the  strongest  desire  to 
inflict  punishment  upon  us."  If  the  North  resorted  to  arms, 
"the  sufferings  of  millions  will  bear  testimony  to  the  folly 
and  wickedness  of  our  oppressors."  *  Writing  to  his  wife 
of  the  inauguration,  he  said,  "The  audience  was  large  and 
brilliant,  and  upon  my  weary  heart  were  showered  smiles, 

^ubose,  Life  of  Yancey,  587. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  121 

plaudits,  and  flowers;  but  beyond  these  I  saw  troubles  and 
thorns  innumerable."  1 

Jefferson  Davis  showed  the  effects  of  months  of  worry. 
His  spare  figure  was  almost  emaciated;  his  features  had 
sharpened;  his  thin  lips  were  compressed;  the  square  jaw 
was  still  more  prominent.  The  last  trace  of  youth  had 
gone  from  his  face,  which  had  become  the  austere,  mag- 
nificent face  of  the  war  portraits. 

One  who  met  him  at  the  time  describes  him  thus:  "The 
President  is  a  small-sized,  thoughtful-looking  gentleman, 
neatly  dressed  in  a  full  suit  of  gray  domestic  cloth.  His 
manners  are  simple  yet  dignified,  and  his  greeting  cordial 
but  quiet.  ...  He  spoke  with  the  frankness  of  a  sol- 
dier rather  than  in  the  constrained  manner  of  the  dip- 
lomatist. While  deploring  the  possibility  of  hostilities  be- 
tween the  North  and  South,  and  admitting  the  folly  of  an 
appeal  to  arms  to  settle  controverted  questions  of  govern- 
ment in  this  civilized  age  and  country,  nothing  escaped  him 
reflecting  in  the  least  on  the  North.  .  .  .  His  whole  tone 
during  the  interview  seemed  to  be  one  of  regret  that  the 
persistent  fanaticism  of  the  North  should  have  estranged 
two  sections  which  were,  in  most  respects,  congenial  to  each 
other."  2 

Upon  his  entrance  on  the  presidency,  Davis  began  to 
suffer  from  his  limitations,  which  had  not  handicapped  him 
in  the  Senate.  He  found  himself  confronted  by  the  double 
labor  of  creating  an  administration  and  preparing  for  war. 
Governmental  problems  pressed  for  solution.  He  had  lit- 
tle knowledge  of  commerce  and  finance.  He  had  never  been 
popular  with  the  crowd,  even  in  Mississippi.    He  did  not 

Carina  Davis,  Jefferson  Davis,  a  Memoir,  2,  33. 
3  Reminiscences  of  Richard  Lathers,  164. 


122  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

understand  the  arts  of  demagogy,  so  useful  on  occasions. 
He  awed  men  to  do  his  will  but  did  not  win  them.  He  knew 
little  of  European  politics,  suddenly  become  important  to 
America.  He  prided  himself  on  his  military  information, 
but  he  had  been  out  of  the  army  too  long  to  be  an  up-to- 
date  soldier.  He  had  never  possessed  a  real  aptitude  for 
military  life,' though  he  was  a  good  fighter:  his  mental  habits 
were  literary  and  forensic.  Poe  would  say,  no  doubt,  that 
a  general  is  the  ideal  union  of  poet  and  mathematician. 
Davis  did  not  measure  up  to  this  definition :  his  mathematical 
faculty  was  weak,  and  he  was  always  poor  at  exact  calcula- 
tion. He  had  imagination,  but  that  had  been  dulled  by 
official  life.  His  real  significance  had  come  to  lie  in  speech 
rather  than  in  action.  He  was,  above  all  things,  a  debater; 
and  he  had  become  President  of  the  South  largely  because 
of  his  skill  in  argument.  He  belonged  to  the  world  of 
ideas  more  than  to  that  of  deeds.  Now  he  faced  a  situa- 
tion in  which  political  ideas  and  constitutional  arguments 
were  of  no  importance — which  demanded,  instead,  executive 
initiative,  military  talent  and  man-managing  genius. 

A  whole  government  had  to  be  built,  for  nothing  ex- 
isted except  the  convention,  now  become  the  provisional 
Congress  of  the  Confederacy.  But  the  Nordic  is  never  bet- 
ter than  at  political  creation,  and  Davis  at  once  plunged 
into  the  work  of  forming  an  administration.  He  took  up 
the  matter  of  cabinet  appointments.  As  usual  in  such 
cases,  there  was  too  much  haste.  Congress  had  spent  weeks 
in  dilettante  constitutional  debates  after  going  about  the 
election  of  a  President  with  a  rapidity  suggesting  levity. 
Davis  now,  in  his  cabinet  appointments,  acted  rapidly  and 
with  an  insufficient  understanding  of  the  importance  of  the 
matter.     He  illustrated  his  fundamental  incapacity  as  a 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  123 

practical  politician  by  allowing  political  considerations  to 
determine  the  choice  of  his  ministers. 

People  have  often  wondered  why  Jefferson  Davis  did  not 
select  a  stronger  cabinet.  Better  men  were  available,  and 
Davis  was  usually  pretty  sound  in  his  estimate  of  character 
and  ability.  Political  availability,  not  merit,  was  the  de- 
termining factor  in  his  choice.  He  was  filled  with  the  same 
futile  idea  of  expediency  that  led  the  convention  to  allow 
Stephens  to  make  the  constitution  and  then  to  elect  him 
Vice  President.  He  wished  to  combine  all  the  states  and  all 
the  leading  interests  in  the  South  in  support  of  the  admin- 
istration. Great  men  must  be  conciliated,  every  state  must 
have  something. 

There  was  Yancey,  the  leading  fire-eater:  he  could  not  be 
ignored  without  peril,  though  he  was  not  well  qualified  for 
any  cabinet  position.  He  was  an  orator,  not  an  admin- 
istrator. Davis  sent  for  him  soon  after  reaching  Mont- 
gomery and  offered  him  a  portfolio — probably  the  Attorney- 
Generalship,1  the  least  important  cabinet  place — or  the  head- 
ship of  a  commission  about  to  be  sent  to  Europe  to  obtain 
recognition  of  the  Confederacy,  an  appointment  for  which 
Yancey  was  entirely  unfit.  Yancey,  not  caring  for  a  worth- 
less cabinet  position,  chose  to  go  to  Europe,  at  the  same 
time  suggesting  a  portfolio  for  a  friend,  Leroy  Pope  Walker.2 
Davis  purchased,  or  thought  that  he  purchased,  Yancey's 
aid  by  naming  Walker  for  the  most  important  place  of  all, 
the  Secretaryship  of  War.  He  had  considered  for  this  office 
Braxton  Bragg,  who  was  a  trained  soldier.  Walker  was 
quite  unknown,  and  the  President  would  never  have  thought 
of  giving  him  anything  except  as  a  peace  offering  to  Yan- 

1  Southern  History  Association  Publications,  9,  278. 
2Dubose,  Life  of  Yancey,  588. 


124  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

cey,  who  was  still  somewhat  sore  over  his  failure  to  be 
chief  magistrate. 

Robert  Barnwell  had  done  much  to  make  Davis  Presi- 
dent and  Barnwell  was  a  kinsman  of  the  terrible  Rhett, 
who  owned  the  leading  newspaper  in  the  South.  The  Barn- 
well-Rhett  influence  meant  South  Carolina,  and  Rhett 
nursed  a  deep  disappointment.  Davis  offered  Barnwell  the 
portfolio  of  State,  which  as  the  most  elevated  cabinet  post 
belonged  of  right  to  South  Carolina,  but  Barnwell  declined 
it.  He,  like  Yancey,  however,  had  his  own  nominee:  he 
suggested  Christopher  Memminger  for  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.  Davis  at  once  reconsidered  his  own  plan,  which 
called  for  Robert  Toombs  for  the  Treasury.  He  made 
Memminger  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  not  because  he  knew 
anything  about  him  or  supposed  him  to  be  a  good  man  for 
the  place  but  because  Barnwell  asked  it.  Thus  a  small 
South  Carolina  politician  received  one  of  the  most  responsible 
posts  of  all.1 

With  South  Carolina  out  of  the  way,  Georgia  had  to  be 
considered.  Toombs  had  been  selected  for  the  Treasury,  an 
office  for  which  he  was  admirably  fitted,  for  he  was  one  of 
the  best- versed  economists  in  the  United  States.  But  the 
Treasury  had  been  bestowed,  and  besides  anything  less 
than  the  premiership  was  hardly  worthy  of  the  man  who 
had  expected  the  presidency  and  who  was,  in  many  respects, 
the  leading  Southerner.  It  was  necessary  to  bind  the  de- 
feated rival.  Toombs  reluctantly  consented  to  be  Secretary 
of  State:  after  his  great  disappointment  it  was  poor  con- 
solation. 

The  other  states  to  be  considered  were  Florida,  Louisiana 
and  Texas.  Stephen  B.  Mallory  of  Florida  became  Secretary 

1  Battles  and  Leaders  of  the  Civil  War,  i,  104. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  125 

of  the  Navy  because  he  had  been  chairman  of  the  Commit- 
tee on  Naval  Affairs  in  the  United  States  Senate.  Judah  P. 
Benjamin,  late  senator  from  Louisiana,  was  given  the  small 
place  of  Attorney- General  which  Yancey  had  declined.  John 
H.  Reagan  of  Texas  became  Postmaster-General.  Thus,  all 
the  original  states  of  the  Confederacy  and  all  the  important 
personal  factions  of  the  lower  South  were  taken  care  of. 

The  later  comers,  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee 
and  Arkansas,  received  nothing  at  first.  If  the  Confederacy 
had  shown  any  originality,  instead  of  being  a  slavish  imita- 
tion of  the  United  States,  it  would  have  added  cabinet  posts: 
Secretary  of  Commerce,  Secretary  of  Agriculture,  Secretary 
of  Transportation,  Secretary  of  Slaves  and  Indians,  and 
perhaps  others.  But  the  men  who  made  the  Confederacy 
were  unable  to  escape  the  conviction  that  the  government 
of  the  United  States,  as  it  then  was,  was  the  last  word  in 
human  wisdom.     So  they  added  nothing. 

What  was  the  strength  of  this  cabinet,  appointed  almost 
wholly  on  political  grounds  and  with  little  thought  of  ef- 
ficiency? Toombs,  the  premier,  while  a  very  able  man, 
would  have  done  much  better  as  envoy  to  Europe  than  as 
Secretary  of  State.  He  chafed  so  under  Davis's  too  obvious 
mastership  that  he  did  no  good  and  presently  resigned  to 
enter  the  army,  where  he  served  with  great  gallantry  but 
with  no  especial  success.  In  this  way  the  services  of  one 
of  the  foremost  men  in  America  were  lost  to  the  govern- 
ment, which  did  know  how  to  use  him.  Memminger,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  was  one  of  those  restless  medi- 
ocrities who  are  forever  pushing  their  way  into  places  too 
large  for  them.  Lawyer,  banker,  philanthropist,  minor  poli- 
tician, he  was  a  typical  prominent  citizen  and  an  admirable 
average  man.    His  routine,  unimaginative  industry  and  econ- 


126  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

omy  were  out  of  place  in  the  Confederate  treasury.  He  was 
a  sound  business  man  in  a  place  demanding  boldness  and 
originality,  a  shopkeeper  in  a  promoter's  shoes.  The  little 
dried-up,  side-whiskered  lawyer  who  looked  like  a  char- 
acter out  of  Dickens,  the  eminently  respectable  vestryman 
of  St.  Somebody's,  was  hardly  the  inspired  experimenter 
needed  to  guide  to  port  the  leaky  bark  of  Confederate 
finance.    He  was  a  consistent  failure  all  the  way  through. 

Mallory  was  exceedingly  unpopular,  but  he  was  in  many 
respects  a  good  appointment.  Beyond  doubt  he  was  a  man 
of  talent  and  initiative.  While  the  United  States  govern- 
ment, with  unlimited  resources  at  its  disposal,  was  con- 
tented with  a  navy  of  wooden  sailing  vessels  and  actually 
had  to  have  the  Monitor  rammed  down  its  throat,  Mallory 
was  fishing  up  a  sunken  hulk  and  building  the  first  ironclad. 
He  also  improvised  rams  on  the  Mississippi  which  might 
have  played  a  great  part  in  the  war  if  there  had  been  any- 
thing to  make  them  of  but  logs  and  condemned  boilers. 
The  Confederate  navy  was  the  creation  of  genius. 

Walker,  the  Secretary  of  War,  was  a  conscientious  per- 
son not  without  parts,  but  he  was  superseded  by  Jefferson 
Davis,  who,  for  a  time,  and  indeed  through  a  considerable 
part  of  the  war,  looked  on  the  department  as  his  particular 
province.  Walker  was  not  happy  in  his  position  and  re- 
signed at  an  early  date,  no  doubt  to  the  President's  relief. 
John  H.  Reagan,  the  Postmaster-General,  was  a  good  ex- 
ecutive who  did  about  as  well  as  any  one  could  have  done 
with  the  somewhat  hopeless  Confederate  post  office. 

The  last  was  first.  Benjamin  had  been  given  the  small 
place  of  Attorney-General  because  Louisiana  had  to  have 
something.  For  some  months  he  kicked  his  heels  as  min- 
ister of  justice  of  a  nation  that  had  no  law  cases.    He  might 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  127 

well  have  resigned  in  disgust  and  fallen  into  oblivion,  for 
he  was  no  soldier.  But  Benjamin  was  a  subtle,  astute,  time- 
serving politician  bent  on  rising.  He  used  his  gifts  so 
well  that  he  climbed  out  of  justice  into  the  Secretaryship  of 
War  and,  when  he  proved  a  failure  there,  continued  on  up 
to  the  portfolio  of  State.  Here  he  was  at  home,  for  no 
man  in  the  South  had  better  diplomatic  talents  or  a  wider 
knowledge  of  European  affairs. 

In  general,  it  may  be  said  that  Toombs  was  so  restless 
and  unhappy  as  to  be  useless;  that  Mallory,  Benjamin  and 
Reagan  were  good  appointments,  and  that  Walker  and 
Memminger  were  weak.  No  figure  stood  out  as  at  all  re- 
markable. The  cabinet  compared  unfavorably  with  that 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Potomac,  which  included  Seward, 
Chase,  Bates  and  later  Stanton.  Jefferson  Davis,  seeking 
to  be  politically  shrewd  in  a  great  crisis,  succeeded  merely 
in  getting  a  weak  administration.  Everything  should  have 
been  sacrificed  for  efficiency  in  such  an  hour.  But  Davis 
was  no  politician  and,  being  none,  he  failed  to  see  that  what 
the  country  demanded  was  a  strong  and  able  government.  It 
was  not  a  matter  of  soothing  state  pride  but  of  inspiring  a 
nation. 

These  days  in  Montgomery  were  crowded  with  activity 
for  Davis.  He  lived  in  a  plain  house  near  the  government 
building,  where  he  spent  fifteen  out  of  the  twenty-four  hours. 
He  rose  early,  worked  until  breakfast  at  home  and  then  went 
to  his  office.1  Midnight  often  found  him  at  his  desk.  He 
was  very  accessible.  Cabinet  members  and  other  officials 
came  without  ceremony,  and  strangers  were  merely  an- 
nounced by  an  usher.  It  was  the  perfection  of  democratic 
simplicity,  an  improvement  on  Jefferson  himself. 

1T.  C.  De  Leon,  Four  Years  in  Rebel  Capitals,  40. 


128  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Davis  exerted  such  arts  of  management  as  he  was  master 
of.  "He  is  very  chatty  and  tries  to  be  agreeable,"  wrote 
T.  R.  R.  Cobb.1  Wishing  to  send  an  envoy  to  Tennessee, 
which  had  not  yet  seceded,  he  summoned  Henry  W.  Hil- 
liard,  a  politician  of  that  state.  When  Hilliard  agreed  to 
go  to  Nashville  to  hurry  up  secession,  Davis  shook  him 
warmly  by  the  hand  and  invited  him  to  attend  a  cabinet 
meeting.  On  Hilliard's  return  from  his  mission,  Davis  greeted 
him  most  cordially.  "Mr.  Hilliard,  you  have  transcended 
my  expectations,"  he  said  enthusiastically.2 

Sometimes  Varina  Davis  helped  out  her  husband's  diplo- 
macy. Davis  chose  the  rather  crusty  T.  R.  R.  Cobb  as  a 
special  envoy  to  Arkansas,  to  bring  about  the  secession 
of  that  wavering  state.  Cobb  declined  two  invitations  to 
undertake  the  mission.  On  the  second  of  these  occasions, 
the  President  and  his  wife  joined  Cobb  at  breakfast,  and 
Mrs.  Davis  charmed  the  Georgian  by  taking  a  great  in- 
terest in  his  family,  inquiring  about  the  several  children. 
Notwithstanding,  Cobb  held  out  against  her  blandishments 
and  did  not  go  to  Arkansas.3 

The  President's  industry  would  have  been  more  com- 
mendable if  it  had  not  been  largely  misdirected.  Most 
of  his  time  was  spent  on  details  of  appointments — in  pass- 
ing on  commissions  of  second  lieutenants  and  similar  small 
things.  The  result  was  that  there  was  insufficient  time 
for  the  consideration  of  large  matters.  The  prime  need 
was  money,  and  Davis  left  the  financial  policy  entirely  to 
Memminger.  Memminger,  fiendishly  industrious  and 
thoroughly  commonplace,   followed  the   line  of  least  re- 

1  Southern  History  Association  Publications,  9,  277. 

2  H.  W.  Hilliard,  Politics  and  Pen  Pictures,  330. 

3  Southern  History  Association  Publications,  9,  284. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  129 

sistance,  falling  back  on  the  time-honored  expedient  of 
credit  money  and  making  no  effort  to  establish  a  secured 
currency.  It  was  a  natural  temptation,  for  so  strong  was 
the  credit  of  the  Confederate  government  that  treasury 
notes  exchanged  at  par  with  gold  for  some  months  and 
did  not  seriously  decline  until  the  end  of  1861. 

The  opponents  of  Davis  and  Memminger  later  pointed 
out,  with  bitter  satisfaction,  that  no  effort  was  made  to 
build  a  monetary  system  on  the  resources  of  the  South,  raw 
materials,  by  exportation  in  1861.  Probably  one- third  of 
the  cotton  crop  of  i860  was  available,  besides  other  prod- 
ucts. The  whole  crop  of  1861  could  have  been  exported, 
since  the  blockade  of  the  ports  did  not  become  really  ef- 
fective until  well  in  1862.  Ships  were  obtainable  in  1861: 
a  fleet  of  steamers  was  offered  to  the  South  at  a  low 
price.  Besides,  there  would  have  been  many  European 
cargo  carriers  if  high  freight  rates  had  been  tendered  at 
first.  It  would  not  have  been  difficult  for  the  South  to  ex- 
port enough  cotton  for  a  credit  of  many  millions  of  dollars; 
a  credit  which,  in  itself,  would  almost  have  insured  the 
success  of  the  currency. 

In  reply  to  this  criticism,  Memminger  rather  effectively 
showed  that  a  large  number  of  steamers  would  have  been 
needed  for  exportation  if  the  government  had  bought  cotton 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  attempted  to  send  it  abroad. 
This  is  true,  and  it  might  seem  that  Memminger  did  all 
that  was  practicable  under  the  circumstances.  Yet  such 
was  not  the  case.  It  would,  indeed,  have  been  difficult  for 
the  South  to  export  the  whole  cotton  crop  at  once;  but 
it  might  have  purchased  the  cotton  and  used  it  as  security 
for  a  European  loan,  exporting  it  from  time  to  time  and 
with  a  part  of  the  borrowed  money  purchasing  steamers 


130  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

for  further  exportation.  The  South  could  have  raised 
$50,000,000  in  1 86 1,  with  which  it  might  have  purchased 
arms  and  munitions  and  procured  agents  and  sympathizers 
in  the  capitals  of  Europe.  That  it  did  not  do  so  was  due 
to  the  over-cautious,  wholly  uninspired  financial  policy  of 
the  government. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  not  primarily  at  fault  for  the  South's 
failure  to  utilize  its  one  great  monetary  resource  while 
there  was  yet  time.  He  had  so  little  knowledge  of 
economics  and  finance  that  he  was  driven  to  rely  on  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who,  unfortunately,  did  not 
measure  up  to  the  demand.  Memminger  failed,  partly  be- 
cause he  was  a  victim  of  an  idea  common  in  the  South  at 
that  time  and  shared  by  Rhett  himself — the  famous  "Cotton 
is  King"  delusion.  According  to  this  theory,  it  was  the 
true  policy  of  the  South  to  cut  off  the  cotton  supply  of 
Europe  in  order  to  force  the  latter  to  intervene  in  behalf 
of  the  Confederacy.  The  scheme  might  have  worked  but 
for  considerations  the  theorists  ignored:  to  wit,  that  the 
Unionists  might  be  able  to  take  cotton  by  force  or  that 
Southerners  might  be  willing  to  sell  it  to  them.  The  result 
was  that  the  cotton  supply  was  not  cut  off;  it  constantly 
increased  as  the  area  occupied  by  the  Union  armies  en- 
larged. Thus,  for  the  sake  of  an  untried  theory,  the  Con- 
federate government  allowed  the  golden  months  of  1861  to 
pass  without  attempting  a  cotton  loan  or  the  exportation  of 
cotton  in  large  amounts. 

Jefferson  Davis  did  not  rise  above  the  "Cotton  is  King" 
economy,  giving  full  support  to  Memminger.  Largely  be- 
cause of  Memminger's  delusion,  the  South  resorted  to  paper 
currency  instead  of  laying  up  treasures  in  Europe:  with 
enormous  assets,  it  had  no  resource  but  credit  money.  There 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  131 

can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Union  blockade  was  a  great  factor 
in  the  winning  of  the  war,  but  that  it  was  so  important 
was,  in  no  small  measure,  due  to  Memminger's  action  in 
keeping  cotton  at  home  and. attempting  to  conduct  the  gov- 
ernment wholly  on  borrowing.  The  government  looked  on 
for  months  while  the  blockade  was  being  put  into  effect. 

In  the  end,  the  South  adapted  itself  to  the  blockade  to  a 
considerable  extent.  Not  until  late  in  1862  did  it  become 
seriously  troublesome.  In  1863  it  was  a  genuine  menace, 
though  large  quantities  of  arms  were  nevertheless  imported. 
In  1864  blockade-running  largely  triumphed  over  blockad- 
ing. In  the  autumn  months  of  that  year,  before  the  fall 
of  Fort  Fisher,  an  enormous  amount  of  military  goods,  along 
with  other  imports,  poured  into  the  South.1 

Not  only  did  the  government  fail  to  make  a  loan  in  Europe 
early  in  the  war,  but  it  also  attempted  little  taxation  while 
the  country  was  still  able  to  bear  it.  Incredible  as  it  may 
seem,  the  Confederacy  conducted  a  great  war  for  four  years 
on  no  other  real  resources  than  a  few  million  dollars  of 
specie  borrowed  from  the  banks  or  seized  in  a  branch  mint, 
a  few  million  dollars  borrowed  in  Europe  at  a  later  time, 
and  a  small  sum  raised  by  cotton  exportation.  The  amount 
of  real  money  spent  by  the  Confederate  government  in  the 
Civil  War  would  not  have  bought  toothpicks  for  the  Ameri- 
can army  in  191 7. 

From  this  it  would  appear  that  fiat  currency  is  by  no 
means  an  impotent  instrument  so  long  as  the  confidence  of 
the  people  is  not  entirely  broken.  In  1861  Confederate 
paper  had  no  more  behind  it  than  in  1864,  but  in  1861 
it  passed  at  par  with  bullion  and  three  years  later  at  an 
enormous  depreciation.    The  difference  was  rather  one  of 

1  Jones,  A  Rebel  War  Clerk's  Diary,  2,  262. 


132  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

hope  than  of  redundancy.  In  1861  hope  was  high;  in  1864 
it  was  running  low.  If  the  South  had  won,  the  redemption 
of  a  billion  dollars  of  paper  currency  would  not  have  been 
a  very  serious  matter. 

The  financial  methods  of  the  government,  when  joined 
to  military  and  political  mistakes,  were  destined  to  prove 
fatal.  The  South  was  a  raw-material  country,  almost  wholly 
without  manufactures.  Its  problem  was  to  secure  an  ex- 
change for  raw  materials  of  manufactured  articles  in  suffi- 
cient quantities  to  supply  the  main  needs  of  the  army  and 
of  the  populace.  If  it  could  be  kept  from  exchange,  its 
defeat  was  likely:  if  it  could  exchange,  its  success  was 
almost  assured.  The  government  did  not  realize  its  op- 
portunity to  export  raw  materials  in  the  opening  months 
of  the  war;  it  also  failed  to  buy  cotton  in  large  quantities 
in  order  to  raise  a  loan  and  secure  the  currency.  If  Con- 
federate paper  could  have  been  redeemed  in  Europe  even 
at  a  large  depreciation,  it  would  have  continued  to  be  valu- 
able on  account  of  the  patriotism  of  the  Southern  people.  As 
it  had  absolutely  nothing  behind  it,  it  collapsed,  and  its 
collapse  had  much  to  do  with  the  downfall  of  the  South. 
The  people  starved  and  used  worthless  rag  money  with  the 
wharves  piled  high  with  products  for  which  Europe  was 
clamoring. 

Yet  at  the  beginning  the  prospects  of  the  Confederacy 
were  glorious.  It  had  begun  its  career  under  auspicious 
omens.  The  states  of  the  lower  South  had  acted  with 
promptness  and  vigor,  while  the  North  was  torn  by  dis- 
sensions. A  government  had  been  formed  at  Montgomery, 
headed  by  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  picturesque  figures 
in  American  public  life.  For  the  moment  Davis  over- 
shadowed Lincoln,  for  Lincoln  had  not  yet  had  the  oppor- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  133 

tunity  to  show  that  he  was  the  greater  man.  The  future  of 
the  North  seemed  cheerless.  Racked  up  against  Canada,  the 
North  could  not  expand,  while  the  South  had  the  southern 
end  of  North  America  and  the  whole  magnificent  continent 
of  South  America  to  itself. 

The  outeide  world  thought  of  America  largely  in  terms 
of  cotton,  which  was  the  main  export  and  chief  source 
of  wealth:  America  was  the  cotton  country.  The  English 
upper  classes,  strongly  Nordic  themselves,  naturally  sided 
with  the  Nordic  spirit  and  institutions  of  the  South.  The 
industrial  classes  as  inevitably  sympathized  with  the  North. 
The  government  was  neutral.  Yet  the  attitude  of  the  Rritish 
government  was  full  of  menace  to  the  Union  and  of  promise 
to  the  Confederacy.  The  break-up  of  the  republic 
might  mean  the  winning  of  the  South  as  a  sort  of  vassal 
state,  a  tariffless  market  for  English  manufactures.  If  the 
South  was  willing  to  accept  this  position  it  had  a  chance  to 
gain  the  help  of  England,  in  spite  of  Prince  Albert's  strong 
preference  for  the  North. 

The  Rritish  government  had  two  embarrassments  in  any 
plan  for  extending  aid  to  the  South.  The  first  was  slavery, 
which  was  opposed  to  the  Rritish  tradition  of  the  past  gen- 
eration. The  other  obstacle  grew  out  of  the  French  oc- 
cupation of  Mexico.  Napoleon  III  conquered  Mexico  and 
seemed  about  to  establish  a  protectorate  over  it.  If  the 
Rritish  government  helped  the  South  to  gain  its  inde- 
pendence, it  would  probably  be  giving  a  deathblow  to  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  which  England  had  devised  for  its  own 
benefit — which  was,  indeed,  as  much  a  Rritish  policy  as 
an  American.  In  case  the  South  failed  to  dislodge  the 
French,  France  would  become  the  dominant  power  in  trop- 
ical America. 


134  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

The  result  was  that  England  put  pressure  on  Napoleon 
to  keep  him  from  declaring  for  the  South.  His  policy  be- 
came hopelessly  irresolute  and  confused,  because  he  could 
not  afford  to  break  with  England.  Though  he  was  pursuing 
a  course  that  depended  for  success  on  the  success  of  the 
South,  he  looked  on  helplessly  while  his  plans  were  brought 
to  nought.  But  for  this  Mexican  interlude,  England  might 
have  recognized  the  Confederacy.  It  might  have  recognized 
the  Confederacy  anyway.  Much  depended  on  the  induce- 
ments offered  by  Jefferson  Davis. 

He  failed  to  offer  enough.  In  fact,  he  did  not  really 
offer  anything.  His  political  incapacity  once  more  undid 
him.  Partly  that,  and  partly  his  proud  independence  of 
spirit  and  thoroughgoing  patriotism.  Davis  might  have  won 
English  support  but  for  his  whole-hearted  Americanism. 
He  did  not  want  independence  of  the  North  at  the  price 
of  dependence  on  England.  Yet  this  was  the  price  that  had 
to  be  paid — a  temporary  dependence,  at  least,  on  England. 

Davis,  in  his  ignorance  of  European  affairs,  did  not 
realize  the  situation  as  fully  as  other  Southern  politicians 
did.  Rhett,  who  was  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign 
Relations  in  the  provisional  Congress,  and  Toombs,  the  Sec- 
retary of  State,  drew  up  a  plan  offering  England  large  com- 
mercial concessions  in  return  for  recognition.  In  fact, 
Rhett  and  Toombs  would  probably  have  accepted  vassalage, 
trusting  to  win  complete  commercial  independence  at  a 
later  date.  If  the  planters  had  kept  control  of  the  govern- 
ment, the  plan  would  have  gone  through.  England  was 
to  be  offered  possession  of  Southern  commerce  for  twenty 
years. 

Davis  would  not  agree  to  this,  and  on  the  very  threshold 
of  his  career  thwarted  Rhett  and  Toombs  and  turned  them 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  135 

against  him.  He  probably  did  not  think  the  sacrifice  nec- 
essary— besides,  there  was  his  pride.  He  seems  to  have 
thought  that  England  could  be  won  by  vague  assurances. 
When  the  commission  headed  by  Yancey  went  abroad  in 
1 86 1,  it  had  no  authority  to  make  treaties:  it  had  no 
power  to  do  anything  but  advertise  the  trade  advantages 
of  the  South  and  thus  gain  the  good  offices  of  Europe. 
Naturally,  Europe  was  not  to  be  dragged  into  danger  of 
war  without  definite  compensations.  As  might  have  been 
foreseen,  Yancey's  mission  proved  a  fiasco  and  the  promoter 
of  disunion  returned  in  despair.  Late  in  the  same  year 
the  famous  Mason  and  Slidell  mission  went  abroad,  but 
the  commissioners  were  taken  from  an  English  ship  by  a 
Union  man-of-war,  and  until  their  release,  some  time  later, 
the  Confederate  government  was  represented  in  Europe  only 
by  a  few  purchasing  agents. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  no  foreign  policy,  though  he  had  a 
very  lively  hope  of  foreign  intervention.  Toombs  offered 
advice  in  vain.  The  President  was  drifting,  hoping  that 
England's  economic  necessities  would  force  a  break  of  the 
blockade  and  leave  the  Confederacy  untrammeled  by  a  dis- 
advantageous treaty.  From  the  beginning  of  the  war  until 
1864,  Davis  really  counted  on  European  intervention  as  the 
South's  best  hope  of  success.  For  this  reason,  mainly,  he 
adopted  an  attitude  of  masterly  inactivity  in  the  first  months 
of  the  Confederacy,  letting  time  pass  unimproved  and  failing 
properly  to  equip  the  army  before  the  closing  of  the  ports. 
If  Jefferson  Davis  had  not  counted  on  foreign  aid,  he  would 
have  made  much  more  vigorous  preparations  for  war  than  he 
did. 

Before  the  government  was  a  month  old  Davis  had 
let  the  politicians  know  that  he  was  master.     Rhett  and 


136  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Toombs,  who  had  counted  on  conducting  foreign  affairs, 
soon  found  themselves  helpless  and  unregarded.  The  fore- 
most men  of  the  South  were  without  influence.  The  only 
three  persons  who  had  much  power  were  Mallory;  Mem- 
minger,  who  was  allowed  to  conduct  the  treasury  as  seemed 
best  to  him  since  Davis  did  not  deal  with  finance;  and 
Benjamin,  who  was  fast  becoming  the  President's  con- 
fidential adviser. 

Benjamin,  who  was  destined  to  play  a  leading  role  in  the 
tragedy  of  the  Confederacy,  was  a  deft,  supple  man  who 
knew  how  to  combine  deference  with  charm.  Without  much 
intellectual  depth,  he  had  a  large  knowledge  of  life  and 
men.  He  was  an  unsurpassed  jury  lawyer,  a  pleasingly  elo- 
quent senator,  a  clever  politician.  After  studying  Jefferson 
Davis  for  some  months,  he  learned  how  to  approach  him. 
The  President,  like  most  rulers,  enjoyed  being  treated  as  a 
great  man:  indeed,  his  worst  weakness  was  susceptibility  to 
flattery.  He  wished  to  be  agreed  with,  to  impress,  to  per- 
suade; he  disliked  opposition.  Benjamin  agreed  with  him. 
He  further  had  the  address  to  advance  suggestions  in  such 
a  way  that  they  seemed  to  emanate  from  the  President 
himself.  The  result  was  that  Davis  came  to  lean  more 
and  more  on  the  adroit  Benjamin  and  less  and  less  on  any 
other  member  of  the  cabinet. 

Outside  the  cabinet  the  President  had  few  intimates. 
From  the  first  he  did  not  get  on  well  with  the  planter 
politicians.  The  imperious  Rhett,  Yancey,  Toombs,  Wigfall, 
and  all  their  tribe  spoke  to  him  freely  and  as  man  to 
man;  they  were  sometimes  undiplomatic.  Consequently, 
Benjamin,  who  never  deviated  from  smooth  courtesy  and 
smiling  acquiescence,  obtained  an  influence  somewhat  out 
of  proportion  to  his  merits.    He  was  a  shrewd  man  of  af- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  137 

fairs  rather  than  a  statesman,  and  not  a  very  able  admin- 
istrator. Davis  tried  him  as  Secretary  of  War  and  found 
him  unsatisfactory.  He  then  made  Benjamin  Secretary  of 
State  and  put  foreign  affairs  in  his  hands  to  a  far  greater 
degree  than  in  the  case  of  Toombs  and  Hunter,  the  two 
premiers  that  preceded  the  Louisianian.  In  this  capacity 
Benjamin  admirably  justified  Davis's  judgment.  He  did 
everything  possible  under  conditions  which  made  nothing  of 
consequence  possible.  If  he  had  been  sent  to  Europe  with 
plenty  of  money  and  unlimited  power  to  make  treaties, 
he  might  have  secured  the  success  of  the  Confederacy.  He 
never  had  the  chance.  Because  of  his  intimacy  with  the 
President,  Benjamin  has  been  prominent  in  Confederate  his- 
tory. Small,  rotund,  dapper;  a  great  lover  of  the  good  things 
of  life;  a  man  of  many  accomplishments;  an  exotic  in  glar- 
ing contrast  with  the  Anglo-Saxons  around  him,  he  stands  as 
one  of  the  most  individual  and  striking  figures  of  the  period. 

Early  April  found  war  not  yet  come  but  hurrying  on 
the  way.  The  Southern  government  sought  to  avert  it  by 
coming  to  terms  with  Washington.  Possibly  it  even  yet 
dreamed  of  a  compromise.  Commissioners  were  sent  to 
persuade  the  Union  government  to  give  up  the  forts  in 
Southern  harbors  still  held  by  United  States  troops:  it  was 
here  that  the  theory  of  state  sovereignty  struck  a  snag. 
Seward,  who  was  bent  on  gaining  time,  entered  into  ne- 
gotiations with  the  commissioners,  allowing  them  to  think 
that  his  government  seriously  considered  their  demands.  At 
length  the  mask  was  thrown  off;  the  Union  government 
called  on  the  states  to  supply  a  volunteer  army,  and  the 
popular  delusion  that  there  would  be  no  war  because  se- 
cession was  legal  suddenly  came  to  an  end. 

Indeed,   the  dreams  of  many  peacemakers  were   sud- 


138  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

denly  shattered.  The  country  was  filled  with  men  who 
thought  that  compromises  might  go  on  being  made  until  the 
end  of  the  world.  The  Virginia  statesmen,  especially,  were 
of  this  type.  While  the  Confederacy  was  forming  at  Mont- 
gomery and  Seward  was  busily  preparing  for  war,  Virginia 
was  conducting  a  Peace  Congress  under  the  chairmanship 
of  ex-President  John  Tyler.  Crittenden  was  prominent  in 
this  as  in  all  other  efforts  to  keep  the  peace,  but  the  day  of 
compromises  was  plainly  over.  The  only  effect  of  the  Peace 
Congress  was  to  embarrass  the  Confederacy  and  retard  the 
secession  of  Virginia.  At  length  the  latter  state  called  a 
convention  to  consider  secession.  So  strong  was  the  Union 
sentiment  that  the  delegates  dillydallied  from  day  to  day, 
while  the  chance  of  securing  Kentucky  and  Maryland  for 
the  South  quickly  faded.  R.  M.  T.  Hunter,  Henry  A. 
Wise  and  the  other  secessionists  were  powerless  to  move 
Virginia  until  mid- April.  This  delay  enabled  Seward  to 
win  a  victory  that  might  almost  be  said  to  have  saved  the 
Union.  By  holding  the  attitude  of  conciliation  while  con- 
servatives still  hoped  for  peace,  he  enabled  the  Lincoln 
administration  to  secure  Washington  and  complete  its  organ- 
ization undisturbed.  When  war  came,  the  government  was 
not  altogether  unprepared. 

The  war  began  in  April.  The  Confederates  continued  to 
press  Washington  to  surrender  Fort  Sumter  in  Charles- 
ton harbor.  Seward  had  never  returned  a  definite  refusal, 
but  the  President  made  secret  preparations  to  reen force 
the  fort.  A  fleet  sailed  for  Charleston,  and  the  Southern 
government  was  now  faced  by  the  necessity  of  deciding 
to  permit  a  hostile  force  to  entrench  under  its  very  nose 
or  to  take  the  grave  step  of  opening  the  conflict. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  189 

The  position  was  distressing,  but  at  this  particular  mo- 
ment the  South  had  everything  to  gain  by  delay.  A  month 
earlier  an  attack  on  Sumter  would  have  greatly  embarrassed 
the  Union  government,  but  the  latter  was  now  well  organ- 
ized and  not  unready  for  war.  There  were  no  arms  fac- 
tories or  munitions  works  in  the  South.  A  breathing  space 
of  a  few  weeks  longer  would  enable  the  Confederacy  to  hurry 
in  weapons  and  supplies  from  Europe.  In  a  cabinet  meet- 
ing where  the  question  of  reducing  Sumter  was  discussed, 
Toombs  strongly  opposed  taking  the  offensive.  He  de- 
clared that  the  firing  on  the  fort  would  incur  for  the  South 
the  reproach  of  opening  the  war  and  would  cost  it  all  its 
numerous  friends  in  the  North.  But  Davis  was  in  a  position 
where  further  delay  on  his  part  would  have  been  attributed 
to  fear  or  indifference  to  the  cause — was  he  not  held  by 
many  to  be  a  half-hearted  secessionist? — and  he  decided 
on  action.  The  Confederate  commander  at  Charleston  was 
ordered  to  take  the  fort. 

This  was  easily  done  in  a  bloodless  bombardment  by 
the  city  batteries  that  commanded  the  harbor.  In  a  moment 
the  war  spirit  of  the  North,  hitherto  anything  but  ardent, 
flared  up  at  the  spectacle  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  under  fire. 
A  great  wave  of  enthusiasm  also  swept  the  South.  Thou- 
sands of  men  offered  themselves,  even  begged  to  be  taken 
as  soldiers.  The  Confederacy  might  have  had  a  great  army 
overnight.  But  there  were  few  arms  and  munitions  and 
almost  no  equipment.  The  South  went  to  war  with  a 
deplorable  lack  of  military  means.  The  troops  lugged  shot- 
guns and  antique  muskets  and  dragged  along  cannon  of 
the  vintage  of  1812.  They  were,  of  course,  highly  un- 
trained, though  the  human  material  was  incomparable- — 


140  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  flower  of  the  planter  civilization,  bred  to  hunting  and 
horseback  riding. 

After  the  firing  on  Sumter,  Virginia  seceded.  The  Old 
Dominion  had  dropped  out  of  the  rank  of  foremost  states, 
but  it  was  still  a  power  and  its  action  intensified  the  crisis. 
It  seemed  for  a  moment  that  the  whole  South,  border  states 
and  all,  would  leave  the  Union.  North  Carolina,  Arkansas 
and  Tennessee  seceded,  completing  the  roll  of  the  Confed- 
eracy. Kentucky  and  Maryland,  however,  had  been  lost — 
possibly  because  of  the  slow  action  of  the  other  border 
states. 

R.  M.  T.  Hunter  headed  a  delegation  from  Virginia  to 
the  Confederate  government.  He  at  once  brought  pressure 
to  bear  for  the  removal  of  the  capital  from  Montgomery 
to  Richmond.  Montgomery  had  not  proved  a  comfortable 
home  for  the  politicians,  who  were  eager  for  a  change.  The 
town  was  small,  the  hotels  were  wretched,  the  inhabitants 
were  not  particularly  cordial.  Besides,  the  leaders,  with  the 
same  fallacious  logic  that  had  led  them  to  elect  Stephens 
Vice  President,  felt  that  it  was  desirable  to  court  Virginia 
because  that  state  had  left  the  Union  with  great  reluctance. 
Lastly,  there  was  the  prestige  of  Virginia,  by  which  they 
hoped  to  profit.  It  should  be  noted,  to  his  credit,  that 
Jefferson  Davis  does  not  seem  greatly  to  have  favored  the 
transfer.  His  hesitation  was  justified.  The  strength  of 
the  Confederacy  was  in  the  lower  South,  and  the  seat  of 
the  government  should  have  been  there.  Montgomery  was 
admirably  situated  for  a  Southern  capital,  for  it  looked  both 
East  and  West.  There  the  government  might  have  worked, 
secure  and  undisturbed,  with  army  headquarters  in  Virginia. 
But  Congress  insisted  on  going,  and  Davis  agreed.  This 
was  the  starting  point  of  many  evils.     The  Confederacy 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  141 

bound  its  fortunes  to  a  town  on  the  frontier,  out  of  touch 
with  the  lower  South  and  far  distant  from  what  was  to  prove 
the  main  theater  of  the  war,  the  Mississippi  Valley. 

Richmond,  in  1861,  was  a  small  city  of  40,000  people, 
a  place  of  lawyers  and  tobacco  merchants,  already  old- 
fashioned  though  not  old.  Seen  from  a  little  distance  the 
town  was  quite  charming,  stretching  along  a  range  of  hills 
overlooking  the  James,  with  the  capitol  gleaming  in  the 
center.  This  sedate  place  was  transformed  by  being  chosen 
as  the  seat  of  government.  It  soon  became  crowded  with  a 
floating  population  of  100,000 — soldiers  on  leave,  govern- 
ment clerks,  refugees,  camp  followers,  speculators,  and  all 
the  nameless  human  rubbish  that  accumulates  in  a  capital 
in  war  time.  Dissipated,  feverish,  dirty  because  of  the 
stress  of  war,  at  times  in  actual  danger  of  starvation,  it 
underwent  the  alternate  phases  of  hope  and  despair  for 
four  years  of  bitter  struggle. 

Already,  even  before  the  removal  from  Montgomery, 
Davis  was  beginning  to  lose  the  confidence  of  the  seces- 
sion leaders.  Some  of  them  saw  as  clearly  as  we  do  to- 
day that  there  was  an  imperative  need  of  immediate  action 
— of  taking  the  offensive  rather  than  of  standing  on  the 
defensive.  Nothing  followed  the  reduction  of  Fort  Sumter: 
that  was  a  threat  succeeded  by  a  pause.  It  would  have 
been  better  if  the  pause  had  preceded  the  overt  act  of  war. 
Rhett,  soured  by  his  failure  to  gain  the  presidency  and  ir- 
ritated by  Davis's  action  in  foreign  affairs,  turned  the 
Charleston  Mercury  against  the  administration.  Lawrence 
Keitt  was  labeling  Davis  as  a  failure  and  his  cabinet  as  a 
farce.1  And  Toombs  did  not  hesitate  to  denounce,  in  public 
places,  the  inaction  of  the  government.     A  fat,  unwieldy 

1Mrs.  James  Chestnut,  A  Diary  from  Dixie,  68. 


142  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

man,  with  the  throat  whiskers  of  that  aesthetically  barbarous 
age,  his  appearance  probably  had  something  to  do  with 
his  rejection  for  the  presidency,  as  well  as  his  good- fellow 
habits,  just  as  Davis's  noble  presence  was  a  great  asset. 
Humanity,  still,  after  an  experience  of  thousands  of  years, 
is  ridiculously  influenced  by  externals.  Notwithstanding  his 
barrel  body  and  his  ham-shaped  face,  Toombs  was  a  pub- 
licist of  ability  and  a  leader  of  magnetism.  Of  all  the  se- 
cession chiefs  he  was  the  most  aggressive.  He  had  opposed 
the  firing  on  Sumter,  but  since  the  President  had  seen  fit 
to  open  the  war  he  favored  pressing  it  with  vigor.  The 
enemy,  he  said,  were  in  the  field.  Why  wait  for  them  to  take 
the  initiative?  If  the  Confederates  dallied,  the  Unionists 
would  be  the  invaders.  Virginia  called  for  aid:  it  should 
be  sent  at  once.1 

This  was  an  insubordinate  attitude  for  a  Secretary  of 
State  to  assume  toward  his  master,  but  the  ardent  secession- 
ists were  rendered  desperate  by  Davis's  caution.  It  was 
called  a  defensive  policy,  but  the  truth  is  that  the  President, 
in  the  difficulty  of  his  position,  did  not  know  what  to  do.  He 
was  letting  matters  shape  themselves,  declining  to  attack 
Washington  or  to  take  any  other  aggressive  course.  Indeed, 
any  other  action  would  have  been  difficult,  for  the  Con- 
federate troops  were  still  unequipped  for  war. 

Jefferson  Davis  arrived  in  Richmond  in  May,  1861,  after 
a  journey  in  which  he  received  a  great  many  gratifying 
proofs  of  popular  favor.  Though  the  people  of  North  Caro- 
lina and  Virginia  knew  himjbut  slightly,  they  were  seized 
with  one  of  those  sudden  enthusiasms  for  persons  that  are 
a  familiar  feature  of  war  emotion.  Davis  was  regarded 
as  the  great  man  of  the  South,  now  just  come  into  his  own, 

1  Jones,  A   Rebel  War  Clerk's  Diary,   i,  39. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  143 

and  was  cheered  by  crowds  at  every  station.  His  fine  pres- 
ence, his  senatorial  manner,  his  handsome,  austere  face,  his 
vigorous  speech  had  a  favorable  effect  on  the  curious  spec- 
tators.   For  a  moment  he  was  popular. 

In  Richmond  he  was  received  with  open  arms.  Here  he 
passed  from  the  serene  and  confident  atmosphere  of  the 
lower  South  into  the  anxious  dubiety  of  the  border  states. 
On  the  border  the  people  were  by  no  means  sure  that  the 
war  would  be  a  few  weeks'  affair.  For  that  matter,  neither 
was  Davis.  To  do  him  justice,  he  had  never  entertained 
the  illusions  of  the  fire-eaters  as  to  the  non-military  char- 
acter of  the  North.  If  anything,  he  rather  overrated  the 
power  of  the  North  and  underestimated  the  strength  of  the 
South,  in  spite  of  the  confident  statements  he  sometimes 
made  in  public.  His  real  hope  lay  in  foreign  intervention. 
In  his  wife's  drawing-room,  in  the  cultivated  circle  that  had 
established  itself  as  Confederate  society,  he  laughed  at  the 
boasters  who  claimed  that  the  North  would  not  fight.  In 
moments  of  depression  he  predicted  that  there  would  be 
a  long  war,  full  of  bitter  experiences.1  He  seemed  to  be 
anything  but  sanguine  of  the  outlook  in  June,  1861. 

Richmond  treated  him  well  because  he  was  President  of 
the  South.  Many  of  the  leading  men  became  his  friends, 
particularly  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  and  James  Lyons.  Davis  was 
well  qualified  to  hold  his  own  in  any  society,  for  he  had 
courtly  manners  and  was  probably  one  of  the  most  widely 
read  men  in  the  country.  His  range  of  information  was 
encyclopedic.  In  Richmond,  he  found  himself  among  con- 
genial and  cultured  companions.  The  Virginia  gentlemen 
of  that  day  were  perhaps  behind  the  times,  but  they  were 
usually  well  educated  in  the  old-fashioned  classical  way. 

x  A  Diary  from  Dixie,  71. 


144  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

They  were  not  as  individual  and  as  virile  as  the  lower  South- 
erners, but  they  were  very  fine  men  for  all  that.  They  were 
Nordics  of  the  less  stirring  sort,  whereas  the  people  of  the 
lower  South,  particularly  of  Texas,  were  Nordic  adventurers. 

Yet  Jefferson  Davis,  cordially  as  he  was  treated,  was 
never  received  into  the  heart  of  Virginia.  He  was  always 
looked  on  somewhat  in  the  light  of  a  parvenu.  He  had 
no  generations  of  slave-holding  ancestry  behind  him,  the 
test  of  social  worth  in  Virginia.  While  his  brief  popularity 
lasted  he  was  caressed,  but  later  in  the  war  the  Virginia 
people  grew  colder.  This  was  particularly  the  case  with 
the  women.  Mrs.  Davis  was  received  with'  enthusiasm  in 
1 86 1,  but  was  spitefully  talked  about  in  1864.  The  resi- 
dent ladies  discovered  that  as  a  girl  she  had  done  house- 
work, and  work  was  rather  a  social  crime  in  a  slave-holding 
community. 

Contact  with  Virginia  changed  Jefferson  Davis  consider- 
ably. It  somewhat  ripened  his  judgment,  for  here  he 
rubbed  against  conservatives  who  were  much  nearer  Eng- 
land than  the  lower  Southerners.  Indeed,  the  Virginians 
were  only  rural  Englishmen  a  little  modified,  while  the  lower 
Southerners  were  a  new  and  distinct  type.  Davis  actually 
came  to  think  too  much  of  Virginia  and  too  little  of  the  lower 
South.  The  defense  of  Virginia  was  vigorously  prosecuted 
while  such  vital  far-away  points  as  New  Orleans  were  neg- 
lected. Davis  more  and  more  tended  to  see  matters  through 
the  eyes  of  the  border  states  and  he  largely  lost  his  con- 
tact with  the  Gulf  region. 

There  was  little  time  for  social  profit  and  pleasure  in 
the  first  months  of  the  Confederacy.  Organization  was  the 
pressing  need,  and  that  was  difficult  to  obtain  in  the  lack 
of  organizers.    Politicians  rather  than  administrators  filled 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  145 

the  cabinet  and  the  departmental  headships.  Finance  and 
diplomacy  were  not  in  the  President's  line  and  he  did  not 
give  much  thought  to  them.  War  was  his  specialty,  and  it 
was  generally  believed  that  he  would  shine  in  military  ad- 
ministration. At  the  very  outset,  however,  he  was  em- 
barrassed by  the  jealousies  of  his  generals.  There  was, 
indeed,  almost  a  superfluity  of  riches  in  the  way  of  gen- 
erals, for  many  of  the  leading  officers  of  the  United  States 
army  had  gone  out  of  the  Union  with  their  states.  Five 
men  were  commissioned  full  generals  in  the  following  order: 
A.  S.  Cooper,  Albert  Sidney  Johnston,  Robert  E.  Lee, 
Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  G.  P.  T.  Beauregard. 

Cooper  was  a  routine  nonentity.  The  others  were  men 
of  character  and  ambition.  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  was 
regarded  by  many  as  the  best  officer  in  the  American  service: 
he  had  fought  in  Texas  and  Mexico  and  had  led  an  army  a 
few  years  before  to  reduce  the  Mormons  to  allegiance  to 
the  United  States.  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  who  had  also  served 
in  Mexico,  ranked  Lee  in  the  United  States  army  and,  ac- 
cording to  Confederate  law,  should  have  had  a  higher  grade; 
but  Davis  managed  to  get  around  the  difficulty  on  a  tech- 
nicality, putting  Lee  ahead  of  Johnston.  It  was  a  foolish 
cleverness  on  the  President's  part  and  had  the  effect  of  mak- 
ing a  breach  between  himself  and  one  of  the  foremost  South- 
ern officers.  Lee  was  a  soldier  of  long  service  and  brilliant 
record  and  had  been  picked  by  Winfield  Scott  as  his  suc- 
cessor in  command  of  the  United  States  army.  This  fine 
prospect  he  had  blasted  by  becoming  a  Confederate. 
Beauregard,  though  only  a  captain  at  the  time  of  his  eleva- 
tion, was  looked  on  as  a  soldier  of  exceptional  ability. 

Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  Beauregard  were  assigned  to  the 
command  of  the  two  principal  bodies  of  Confederate  troops, 


146  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

which  were  stationed  in  northern  Virginia.  Richmond  was 
general  headquarters  and  the  seat  of  the  main  training 
camps.  It  was  Davis's  habit,  in  these  days  of  June,  1861, 
to  ride  out  to  the  camps  in  the  afternoon  and  review  the 
troops  in  the  presence  of  swarms  of  women.  "Mr.  Davis," 
said  a  spectator,  "rode  a  beautiful  gray  horse.  .  .  .  His 
worst  enemy  will  allow  that  he  is  a  consummate  rider,  grace- 
ful and  easy  in  the  saddle."  1  He  was  usually  accompanied 
by  his  handsome  young  private  secretary,  Burton  Harrison, 
whose  impeccability  of  dress  and  bearing  was  never  ruffled 
by  the  worst  storms  of  the  Confederacy. 

The  government  had  obtained  quarters  in  Richmond  not 
without  difficulty.  It  was  unceremoniously  crowded  into 
various  places:  the  treasury  occupied  the  former  post  office, 
and  here  Davis  had  his  office.  The  departments  were  or- 
ganized on  what  might  be  considered  an  absurdly  meager 
scale,  and  administration,  especially  in  the  War  Department, 
seems  to  have  been  unbusinesslike.  Foresight  was  lack- 
ing. With  a  great  war  impending  and  thousands  of  men 
volunteering,  the  army  remained  small.  Cavalry  was  usually 
rejected,  though  cavalry  was  precisely  the  branch  in  which 
the  South  was  far  superior  to  the  North.  Infantry  com- 
mands were  not  accepted  for  short  terms  of  service,  and 
the  attitude  of  the  government  was  hardly  calculated  to  fos- 
ter the  enthusiasm  of  the  people.2  In  fact,  the  govern- 
ment made  a  great  mistake  in  not  capitalizing  the  war 
ardor  of  the  South  and  raising  a  large  army  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  conflict,  when  it  could  have  thrown  forward 
on  Washington  at  least  100,000  men.  It  is  true  that  there 
were  not  arms  enough  for  half  that  many,  but  weapons  and 

1A  Diary  from  Dixie,  72. 

*A  Rebel  War  Clerk's  Diary,  i,  59. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  147 

supplies  were  beginning  to  come  in  from  Europe  in  con- 
siderable quantities,  especially  from  Austria.  Not  enough, 
however,  was  done  by  the  government.  The  golden  months 
of  March  and  April,  1861,  when  the  ports  were  still  open 
and  undisturbed,  was  the  period  for  large  arms  importations. 
If  the  Southern  forces  took  the  field  in  1861  poorly  equipped, 
it  was  partly  the  fault  of  the  government,  which  did  not 
act  with  sufficient  energy  in  the  early  months  of  the  struggle. 

By  July,  about  30,000  troops,  fairly  well  equipped,  faced 
a  Union  force  near  Washington  and  another  in  the  Virginia 
Valley  near  Winchester.  The  Union  army,  like  the  Con- 
federate, was  untrained,  but  it  had  modern  artillery  and 
was,  therefore,  stronger.  Beauregard  was  in  eastern  Vir- 
ginia, Johnston  in  the  Valley. 

Beauregard  conceived  the  idea  of  drawing  Johnston  to 
him  and  attacking  McDowell,  who  was  just  outside  Wash- 
ington, and  of  then  turning  with  the  combined  force  on  Pat- 
terson at  Winchester.  Coming  to  Richmond,  he  met  Cooper 
and  Lee  in  Davis's  parlor  at  the  Spotswood  Hotel,  where 
the  President  then  had  rooms.  Here,  on  July  13,  1861,  the 
first  Confederate  council  of  war  was  held.  Beauregard 
presented  his  plan,  but  Lee  objected  that  McDowell  was 
too  close  to  the  Washington  forts  to  be  caught  and  would 
fall  back  into  them  if  attacked.  The  plan  would  be  thus 
frustrated,  while  the  Valley  would  be  laid  open  to  a  counter- 
stroke  by  Patterson.    So  the  proposal  was  rejected.1 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  opinion  held  of  Davis  at  that 
time  that  one  of  the  women  of  his  little  court  wrote  of 
this  council  of  war,  "Of  course  the  President  dominated  the 
party,  as  well  by  his  weight  of  brains  as  by  his  position."  2 

1  Official  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion,  Series  i,  2,  511. 
aMrs.   Chestnut,  83. 


148  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Such  a  statement  is,  in  a  sense,  illuminating;  it  is  diagnostic. 
It  exhibits  the  feminine  admiration  of  Davis  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  war  and  Davis's  own  complacency.  It  would  not 
have  been  written  about  a  man  without  vanity. 

McDowell,  the  Union  commander,  slowly  advanced  south- 
ward until  he  approached  Beauregard,  who  had  taken  posi- 
tion behind  Bull  Run  near  Manassas.  It  was  evident  that 
a  battle  impended.  Davis  kept  closely  informed  of  move- 
ments in  the  field.  He  intended,  in  fact,  to  leave  Richmond 
on  the  eve  of  the  expected  engagement  and  assume  com- 
mand of  the  Southern  forces,  combining  the  roles  of  civil 
ruler  and  general,  after  the  manner  of  Napoleon.  But  Beau- 
regard, who  knew  this  and  did  not  desire  presidential  in- 
terference, failed  to  advise  him  of  the  urgency  of  the  situa- 
tion. In  consequence,  Davis  did  not  leave  Richmond  for  the 
field  until  the  morning  of  July  21,  at  the  very  moment  that 
the  battle  of  Manassas  was  beginning. 

McDowell  had  suddenly  moved  on  Beauregard,  who 
called  on  Johnston  for  aid.  Johnston,  by  a  hurried  march, 
joined  him  just  before  the  battle.  In  a  confused  struggle 
along  Bull  Run  victory  wavered  for  several  hours.  The  day 
was  finally  won  for  the  South  mainly  because  of  Stonewall 
Jackson,  who  handled  his  brigade  with  remarkable  coolness 
in  an  hour  of  hysterical  excitement.  It  was  a  singular  sit- 
uation, such  as  sometimes  occurs  in  war.  The  Southern 
troops  were  falling  back  under  heavy  pressure.  Then,  al- 
most in  a  moment,  they  found  that  they  had  won  the  vic- 
tory. The  Union  line  hesitated,  halted  and  broke  in  utter 
rout.     It  was  a  typical  panic  of  raw  troops. 

Jefferson  Davis  rode  on  the  field  just  as  the  engagement 
was  ending.  Fugitives  from  Confederate  commands  still 
streamed  to  the  rear,  unaware  that  the  battle  was  over. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  149 

The  President  could  not  know  that  it  was.  Joseph  Davis, 
who  was  with  him,  said,  "The  day  is  lost;  let  us  go  no 
farther."  "No,"  replied  the  President,  "if  the  army  is  de- 
feated, so  much  the  greater  reason  that  I  should  be  with 
my  brave  men  and  share  their  fate."  1 

Seeing  a  group  of  men  about  an  officer,  Davis  rode  up 
and  implored  them  to  return  to  their  duty.  Perhaps  he 
was  a  little  melodramatic  under  the  stress  of  his  emotion. 
The  officer,  who  happened  to  be  Stonewall  Jackson  receiving 
treatment  for  a  slight  wound,  was  disagreeably  impressed 
by  the  interference  of  a  civilian  he  did  not  know.  His 
temper  was  always  rather  short,  and  he  informed  the  new- 
comer, in  freezing  tones,  that  the  men  were  his  soldiers 
and  that  the  victory  was  won.  Thus  the  President's  effort 
to  take  part  in  the  action  resulted  in  nothing  but  a  humiliat- 
ing rebuff. 

Davis  now  hunted  up  Johnston  and  Beauregard  and  urged 
an  immediate  pursuit  of  the  flying  foe,  an  advance  on  Wash- 
ington. This  was  clearly  the  thing  to  do.  The  Union 
army  was  demoralized — indeed,  for  the  time  being  it  had 
ceased  to  exist  as  an  organized  force.  Many  of  the  Southern 
regiments  were  fresh  and  all  were  flushed  with  victory.  A 
prompt  advance  would  likely  have  resulted  in  the  capture 
of  Washington  and  the  secession  of  Maryland.  It  was 
the  most  fateful  moment  in  the  whole  history  of  the  Con- 
federacy: any  result  might  have  flowed  from  one  hour 
of  audacity.  Fate  had  given  the  South  the  luckiest  of  vic- 
tories, an  undeserved  but,  none  the  less,  a  golden  oppor- 
tunity. Manassas  in  itself  was  a  small  affair,  hardly  worth 
a  paragraph  in  a  book,  and  its  results  were  wholly  un- 
fortunate for  the  South;  but  it  might  well  have  ranked  as 

'E.  A.   Pollard,   Life  of  Jefferson  Davis,   142. 


150  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

one  of  the  decisive  battles  of  history  if  it  had  been  won  by 
men  capable  of  utilizing  an  advantage,  for  the  border  states 
still  hung  in  the  balance  and  all  of  them  might  have  come 
over  to  the  South  if  the  Confederate  army  had  invaded  the 
North.  Nothing  succeeds  like  success.  Manassas  was  the 
fruit  of  Northern  over-confidence.  The  Union  government 
should  never  have  sent  a  small  and  untrained  army  into  the 
interior  of  Virginia:  this  mistake  gave  the  Confederacy  a 
chance  to  win  the  war  at  a  stroke. 

So  far  the  gods  had  been  with  the  South.  It  had  begun 
its  movement  for  independence  under  favoring  stars.  It 
confronted  a  distracted  North  with  a  largely  united  people. 
Its  economic  resources  remained  intact  while  the  North 
faced  panic  and  ruin.  Its  credit  was  good.  True,  the  South- 
ern government  had  been  undecided  and  dilatory,  adopting 
no  policy  and  inviting  disaster  by  its  tardy  military  prepara- 
tions. Nevertheless,  fate  had  intervened  to  save  it  by  giving 
it  the  first  victory  of  the  war. 

The  gods,  however,  do  not  do  everything;  they  grow 
weary  of  lavishing  opportunities.  Johnston,  the  immedi- 
ate commander  of  the  Southern  army,  was  a  professional 
soldier  of  great  accomplishments  but  little  enterprise.  In 
purely  defensive,  engineer  warfare  he  had  no  superior, 
but  he  lacked  the  energy  to  push  his  victory  home  and  seize 
Washington.  He  made  various  excuses:  the  army  was  dis- 
organized; there  was  lack  of  transportation  (for  a  march 
of  twenty  miles!)  and  so  on.  Thus  the  opportunity  was 
allowed  to  pass,  to  the  astonishment  of  the  world  and  the 
gratitude  of  the  Northern  government. 

Davis  cannot  be  blamed  for  this  ineptitude :  it  was  not  his 
proper  policy  to  interfere  with  his  generals  beyond  giving 
advice,  and  they  had  not  taken  his  advice  to  pursue.    Re- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  151 

turning  to  Richmond,  he  spoke  at  his  hotel  to  a  great  throng. 
He  described  the  overthrow  of  the  Union  host  and  declared 
that  the  just  cause  must  prevail.  He  received  an  ovation, 
as  was  natural,  though  in  a  few  days  men  began  to  ask 
why  the  triumph  had  not  been  followed  up.  Yet  the  public 
generally  had  suddenly  become  confident  of  the  outcome 
of  the  war.  As  for  Jefferson  Davis,  his  own  strong  doubt 
of  success  was  greatly  lessened  by  the  First  Manassas. 

The  Union  government  took  advantage  of  its  fortunate 
respite  to  prepare  for  war  in  earnest,  while  the  efforts  of 
the  South  slackened  from  the  belief  that  they  were  no 
longer  necessary.  Thus  the  South  stood  still  at  the  very 
moment  that  the  North  set  to  work.  Davis  knew  well  enough 
that  the  war  was  not  over,  but  he  could  formulate  no  real 
policy — he  did  not  know  what  to  do.  Toombs  was  out  of 
the  cabinet  now.  Weary  of  his  position  as  minister  of 
foreign  affairs  to  a  government  that  had  no  foreign  affairs 
and  of  official  adviser  to  a  chief  who  never  followed  his 
advice,  the  Georgia  statesman  went  into  the  army.  No 
man  so  virile  and  outspoken  as  Toombs  could  have  co- 
operated effectually  with  the  sensitive,  egotistical  Davis, 
who  demanded  of  his  subordinates  a  recognition  of  his 
superiority.  He  was  by  no  means  the  stubborn,  wrong- 
headed  man  he  has  frequently  been  pictured  as  being:  he 
welcomed  suggestions  if  tactfully  advanced  and  weighed 
questions  carefully;  but  he  could  not  endure  open  opposi- 
tion— especially  opposition  that  implied  any  insufficiency  on 
his  part — and  in  the  exigencies  of  war  men  do  not  always 
measure  words.  His  was  the  sin  of  bookish  people,  intel- 
lectual vanity.  Because  he  had  a  grasp  of  so  many  subjects, 
because  he  debated  so  well,  he  quite  failed  to  realize  that 
the  faculty  of  action  is  the  supreme  thing,  that  expression 


152  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

is  less  than  nothing  and  thought  valuable  only  in  so  far 
as  it  leads  to  doing.  Davis  was,  in  reality,  not  a  man 
of  action  naturally,  or  he  would  have  acted  now.  He  was 
a  student  and  thinker,  a  Cicero  in  another  world  crisis; 
though,  with  a  power  of  character  foreign  to  Cicero,  he  had 
to  some  extent  transformed  himself  into  a  man  of  action, 
and  while  he  was  often  at  a  loss  as  to  the  thing  to  do  he 
never  vacillated  after  he  had  once  decided  on  a  course. 

Benjamin  was  fast  gaining  an  ascendency  over  him.  The 
dexterous  Attorney- General  had  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  War- 
Department,  already  falling  from  Walker's  feeble  grasp.1 
At  times,  in  August,  1861,  there  was  actually  no  Secretary 
of  War  in  charge,  for  Walker  would  go  away,  leaving  the 
department  to  run  itself.  Finally  he  resigned,  and  Benjamin 
was  made  acting  Secretary.  The  change  was  something  of 
an  improvement.  The  Louisianian,  though  he  was  quite 
without  military  knowledge,  brought  the  habits  of  a  busi- 
ness man  to  the  task.  If  he  had  had  any  insight  into  war 
and  if  he  had  been  given  any  rein,  he  might  have  accom- 
plished much.  As  it  was,  he  managed  to  do  little  of 
importance. 

That  Jefferson  Davis  tended  to  shrink  from  decisive  action 
was  indicated  in  the  autumn  of  1861,  when  he  was  forced 
to  make  a  decision  of  a  most  vital  nature.  Beauregard 
and  Johnston,  unenterprising  as  they  were,  were  too  able 
not  to  awaken  to  the  fact  that  a  great  opportunity  was 
slipping  from  their  grasp.  The  South  had  now  about  150,- 
000  men  in  the  field,  scattered  from  Florida  to  Arkansas, 
with  some  40,000  in  Virginia.  This  army  was  equipped 
with  the  material  captured  at  Manassas;  it  had  been  drilled 
into  an  efficient  organization,  and  it  was  prepared  to  take 

XA  Rebel  War  Clerk's  Diary,  I,  71. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  153 

the  offensive  with  good  chances  of  success.  As  yet,  the 
Union  government  had  no  force  to  equal  it,  but  McClellan 
was  strenuously  working  at  the  making  of  an  army  and  it 
was  only  a  question  of  time  before  the  Confederates  would 
be  heavily  outnumbered  and  at  a  great  disadvantage.  So 
Johnston  and  Beauregard  nerved  themselves  to  attack  be- 
fore McClellan  was  ready. 

At  their  invitation,  Davis  visited  the  camp  near  Manassas 
at  the  last  of  September.  Johnston,  Beauregard  and  Gus- 
tavus  W.  Smith  were  present:  Johnston  small,  dapper,  bald- 
headed;  Beauregard  typically  French-looking;  Smith  heavy 
and  ox-faced.  For  some  time  Davis  led  the  conversation, 
apparently  not  desirous  of  coming  to  the  business  of  the 
hour.  He  was  at  length  interrupted  by  Smith,  who  asked 
abruptly  if  it  were  possible  to  reenforce  the  army  sufficiently 
to  invade  the  North.  The  President  inquired  how  many 
men  would  be  needed.  Smith  replied  that  10,000  additional 
troops  would  be  sufficient,  that  an  army  of  50,000  might 
venture  on  invasion.  Davis  then  asked  from  what  point 
it  was  proposed  to  take  the  troops.  Smith  suggested  Pensa- 
cola,  where  there  was  a  large  force  doing  nothing.  The 
President,  after  a  little  thought,  declared  the  plan  imprac- 
ticable, and  the  conference  ended  without  result.1 

Davis  thus  avoided  a  decision  that  involved  great  danger. 
He  preferred  to  remain  defensive,  to  be  safe,  ignoring  the 
fact  that  the  Southern  troops  were  ardent  and  the  North 
unready,  rather  than  take  the  risks  of  the  offensive.  A 
defeat  might  have  spelt  ruin,  though  a  victory  on  Northern 
soil  would  probably  have  meant  independence.  Davis  con- 
cluded to  wait  on  the  turn  of  events.  Europe  might  inter- 
vene and  end  the  war,  or  the  North  might  abandon  as  hope- 

*G.  W.  Smith,  Confederate  War  Papers,  35. 


154  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

less  the  attempt  to  conquer  the  South.    Inaction,  he  thought, 
was  the  best  course. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  reason  for  his  decision.  As 
yet  no  general  had  appeared  who  gave  much  promise  of 
being  able  to  conduct  a  successful  offensive.  Stonewall 
Jackson  was  still  a  mere  brigade  commander ;  Lee  was  fight- 
ing an  unsuccessful  campaign  in  the  mountains  of  Virginia; 
Albert  Sidney  Johnston  had  not  yet  appeared  on  the  scene; 
Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  Beauregard  had  not  improved  their 
success  at  Manassas,  and  Davis  already  distrusted  them. 
Gustavus  Smith  had  done  nothing  but  talk.  Where  was 
the  man  to  lead  the  army  into  Pennsylvania? 

In  spite  of  this,  Davis  would  have  done  well  to  send  the 
army  across  the  Potomac.  No  better  generals  had  arisen 
on  the  Northern  side;  Johnston  and  Beauregard  were  as 
capable  as  McClellan  and  McDowell.  Moreover,  the  South 
possessed  a  positive  advantage  in  the  better  quality  of  its 
troops:  in  the  autumn  of  1861  the  Confederates  were  su- 
perior soldiers,  man  for  man,  to  their  opponents.  This 
superiority,  due  to  familiarity  with  the  use  of  firearms, 
dwindled  steadily  as  the  war  continued.  By  the  end  of 
1863  the  fighting  qualities  of  the  two  armies  were  about 
equal  and  by  the  summer  of  1864  the  Unionists  were,  gen- 
erally, the  better  troops.  In  October,  1861,  however,  with 
approximately  equal  generalship  and  equal  numbers,  the 
chances  of  battle  would  have  favored  the  South.  Conse- 
quently, in  not  undertaking  the  offensive,  Jefferson  Davis 
lost  another  chance  to  win  the  war,  though  something  is  to 
be  said  for  his  reluctance  to  attempt  an  aggressive  cam- 
paign without  an  aggressive  general.  When  one  did  appear 
in  Lee,  Davis  risked  the  invasion  of  Pennsylvania,  but  under 
very  different  conditions  from  those  of  186 1.     An  effort 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  155 

in  1 86 1  might  have  resulted  no  more  favorably  than  that  of 
1863.  Yet  since  the  offensive  was  clearly  the  play  for  the 
Confederates  in  1861,  Davis  would  have  done  well  to 
take  the  offensive  and  leave  consequences  to  the  gods.  The 
gods  might  have  smiled  on  audacity.  At  all  events,  never 
again  did  the  South  have  such  an  opportunity  to  win  the 
war. 


VII 

THE  FIRST  CRISIS 

THERE  was  practically  no  more  fighting  in  the  East 
for  the  rest  of  the  year.  Davis  had  finally  decided 
not  to  take  the  offensive,  partly  because  of  the  military 
risks,  partly  because  he  hoped  for  European  intervention 
and  wished  to  show  the  world  that  the  Confederacy  had 
no  aggressive  designs.  Here  the  politician  interfered  with 
the  soldier,  and  disastrously.  To  adopt  a  waiting  attitude 
was  to  play  into  the  hands  of  the  North.  The  South  pos- 
sessed the  advantage  of  having  a  population  readily  adapt- 
able to  military  pursuits,  for  the  people  were  hunters  and 
therefore  used  to  arms  and  outdoor  life.  In  October,  1861, 
it  could  have  invaded  Pennsylvania  with  50,000  or  60,000 
good  troops,  passably  equipped,  a  force  which  the  half- 
organized  Union  army  could  hardly  have  defeated.  But 
the  government  drifted,  and  by  the  beginning  of  the  next 
campaign  the  military  balance  had  entirely  shifted.  Thus 
the  South  lost  the  benefit  of  its  one  great  military  asset. 

In  the  last  months  of  1861,  the  Confederate  government 
practically  stood  still.  In  the  West,  a  stout  old  militia 
general,  Sterling  Price,  was  fighting  to  bring  Missouri  into 
the  Confederacy,  but  Davis,  with  thousands  of  troops  un- 
employed, gave  him  little  aid.  Price,  indeed,  fought  one 
of  the  most  marvelous  of  campaigns.    With  a  force  lacking 

156 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  157 

ordinary  military  organization  and  governed  by  the  personal 
ascendency  of  the  leaders  alone,  he  won  battles  and  almost 
wrested  Missouri  from  the  Union.  But  Davis  had  no  en- 
couragement to  offer  a  general  who  had  not  graduated  from 
West  Point  and  knew  nothing  of  the  scientific  aspects  of 
war.  Thus  a  state  which  might  have  been  won  for  the 
South  by  vigorous  action  was  allowed  to  go. 

Davis  either  did  not  realize  the  peril  of  his  position  or 
he  could  not  bring  himself  to  act.  His  great  hope  was 
European  intervention.  After  Manassas,  he  trusted  that  in- 
tervention would  come  quickly  and  did  not  push  military 
preparations.  But  recognition  was  yet  to  be  gained,  and  the 
President  now  made  another  effort  to  gain  it.  Late  in  1861 
a  second  commission  was  sent  abroad:  it  had  been  selected 
with  more  thought  to  fitness  and  less  to  politics  than  the 
former  one.  John  Slidell  was  chosen  to  go  to  France  and 
James  M.  Mason  to  England.  The  appointment  of  Slidell 
was  wise,  for  he  was  among  the  cleverest  of  American  dip- 
lomats, but  Mason  was  hardly  so  good  a  selection.  He  had 
been  a  senator  from  Virginia  and  he  was  an  experienced  and 
influential  politician,  but  he  was  unversed  in  international 
intrigue.  A  lively  observer  said  of  him:  "My  wildest 
imagination  will  not  picture  Mr.  Mason  as  a  diplomat.  He 
will  say  'chaw'  for  'chew,'  and  he  will  call  himself  'Jeems/ 
and  he  will  wear  a  dress  coat  for  breakfast.  .  .  .  They  say 
the  English  will  like  Mr.  Mason;  he  is  so  manly,  so  straight- 
forward, so  truthful  and  bold.  'A  fine  old  English  gentle- 
man/ so  said  Russell  to  me,  'but  for  tobacco.  I  like  Mr. 
Mason  and  Mr.  Hunter  better  than  anybody  else.  And  yet 
they  are  wonderfully  unlike/  'Now  you  just  listen  to  me,' 
said  I.  'Is  Mrs.  Davis  [the  President's  wife]  in  hearing — 
no?    Well,  this  sending  Mr.  Mason  to  London  is  the  maddest 


158  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

thing  yet.  Worse  in  some  points  of  view  than  Yancey,  and 
that  was  a  catastrophe/  "  x 

The  appointment  of  Mason  was  a  matter  of  consequence, 
for  England  was  the  power  on  which  the  hopes  of  the  gov- 
ernment hung.  The  post  demanded  a  different  type  from 
the  proud  Virginia  senator.  The  Confederacy  was  an  un- 
recognized government  seeking  recognition,  not  an  estab- 
lished power  treating  with  equals.  It  needed  skilled  in- 
trigants without  feelings,  men  willing  to  ascend  the  back 
stairs  of  courts  and  push  the  interests  of  their  cause  in 
covert  ways.  Benjamin  was,  of  all  others,  the  individual 
best  fitted  for  the  mission,  and  Davis  made  a  vital  mis- 
take in  not  sending  him,  with  full  authority  to  treat  and 
all  the  money  the  government  could  beg  or  borrow.  If 
he  had  been  sent  abroad  with  an  offer  to  England  of  advan- 
tages of  the  first  magnitude  and  with  abundant  means  to 
carry  out  his  mission,  it  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  he 
would  have  succeeded.  But  as  in  the  first  instance,  the  en- 
voys had  no  definite  powers  and  carried  no  definite  offers. 
Besides,  they  had  little  money  with  which  to  play  a  game 
in  which  money  was  indeed  the  sinews  of  war.  Under 
the  circumstances  they  did  all  that  might  have  been  expected. 

Quite  involuntarily,  the  Confederate  envoys  nearly  ac- 
complished their  mission.  They  ran  the  blockade  without 
difficulty  but  after  leaving  Nassau  for  England  were  dragged 
from  a  British  ship  by  a  United  States  man-of-war.  This 
was  little  more  than  what  was  repeatedly  done  by  the  Brit- 
ish in  the  World  War,  but  England  flared  up  at  once  and 
for  a  while  it  seemed  possible  that  the  United  Kingdom 
would  recognize  the  Confederacy.  Seward,  however,  skill- 
fully soothed  the  injured  British  honor  and  the  Confederate 

aMrs.  Chestnut,  117. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  159 

government  made  no  effort  to  improve  the  opportunity  by 
a  great  and  positive  offer.  The  incident  passed  into  history 
without  having  benefited  the  South. 

The  envoys,  released  after  a  long  detention,  went  on  to 
their  posts.  They  failed  in  their  negotiations  but  yet  came 
so  near  succeeding  as  to  indicate  what  might  have  been  ac- 
complished by  diplomats  with  full  discretion  and  ample 
means.  Slidell  actually  brought  over  Napoleon  III  to  the 
Southern  side  by  the  tender  of  a  bribe.  He  offered  a  large 
amount  of  cotton  to  the  emperor  and  exceeded  his  instruc- 
tions by  suggesting  an  alliance  of  France  and  the  Con- 
federacy for  action  in  Mexico.  Napoleon,  in  return,  whis- 
pered to  Slidell  that  it  might  be  possible  to  have  warships 
built  for  the  South  in  French  shipyards,  a  hint  that  the 
Confederate  agent  gladly  accepted.  The  French  connection 
was  further  cultivated  when  the  Confederate  government, 
in  1863,  floated  its  single  foreign  bond  issue  through  Baron 
Erlanger,  a  Paris  financier.  Napoleon  offered  to  mediate 
between  the  belligerents,  but  the  Washington  government 
declined  his  services. 

Under  Napoleon's  assurances,  the  Confederate  agents  con- 
tracted for  the  building  of  several  cruisers  and  two  power- 
ful ironclads  in  France.  The  ships  were  nearly  completed 
when  the  Northern  minister  to  France,  Dayton,  gained 
positive  proof  of  their  destination.  Confronted  with  the 
evidence,  Napoleon  promptly  threw  over  the  Confederacy 
and  refused  to  allow  the  ships  to  sail.  This  was  the  ter- 
rible disappointment  that  Slidell  was  obliged  to  bear  on 
the  very  threshold  of  success. 

Mason  did  not  do  as  much  as  Slidell,  though  he,  too,  ac- 
complished something.  Several  cruisers  were  fitted  out  in 
English  shipyards,  among  them  the  famous  Alabama,  which 


160  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

played  havoc  with  American  shipping.  Other  and  power- 
ful ships  were  built,  which,  if  they  had  got  to  sea,  would 
have  raised  the  blockade  temporarily  and  permitted  a  great 
cotton  exportation.  In  France  and  England  alike,  the  Union 
faced  a  great  danger,  for  the  Confederacy  had  a  sufficiency 
of  excellent  naval  officers  and  only  needed  ships. 

Confederate  diplomacy  was  defeated  by  Seward.  The 
Union  minister  to  England,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  prac- 
tically forced  the  British  government  to  awaken  to  the 
violation  of  neutrality  involved  in  the  building  of  South- 
ern warships  in  England.  Adams  was  able  to  accomplish 
this  only  by  means  of  a  skillful  anti-Southern  propaganda 
in  Europe,  conducted  by  clever  agents  at  Seward's  direction 
and  with  large  expense.  In  fact,  the  Union  spent  money 
to  great  advantage,  while  the  Southern  agents  were  left 
without  the  means  of  purchasing  friendship. 

At  length  the  Confederate  government  did  try  to  raise  a 
small  amount  of  money  abroad.  In  1863,  a  loan  of  $15,- 
000,000  was  raised  by  the  sale  of  cotton  bonds.  The  loan 
was  taken  nearly  at  par  and  was  so  greatly  over-subscribed 
that  it  seems  the  Southern  government  might  have  obtained 
almost  any  sum  it  needed.  But  the  loan  was  too  small  to 
accomplish  much,  and  a  good  deal  of  the  money  obtained  was 
used  in  buying  back  bonds  in  order  to  keep  prices  up.  The 
amount  actually  obtained,  therefore,  was  little. 

Davis  would  not  adopt  a  bold  borrowing  and  spending 
policy:  he  would  not  leap  in  the  dark.  Ordinarily  his  is 
the  right  policy,  the  policy  of  the  prudent  man.  However, 
when  fate  is  thrusting  one  forward  one  must  leap  or  fall: 
one  must  risk  or  fail  for  not  risking.  This  was  the  case 
with  Jefferson  Davis.  In  many  cases  he  did  wisely;  almost 
always  he  did  cautiously;  except  in  some  military  appoint- 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  161 

ments  late  in  the  war,  he  made  no  open,  glaring,  damning 
mistakes.  At  the  same  time  he  scored  no  decisive  triumphs, 
and  in  the  end  he  lost.  Most  men  in  his  position  would  not 
have  done  so  well.  Some  would  have  failed  much  more 
swiftly  and  disastrously.  A  very  great  man  in  that  place 
of  terrible  responsibility  would  have  failed  utterly  or  would 
have  succeeded,  because  a  very  great  man  would  have  dared. 
If  the  South  could  have  been  saved  by  prudence,  patience, 
fortitude,  resolution,  Jefferson  Davis  would  have  saved  it. 
But  it  could  not  be  saved  by  passive  virtues.  It  could 
be  saved  only  by  mighty  action,  and  Davis  did  not  act 
mightily. 

He  did  not  buy  cotton  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  and 
rush  it  abroad.  He  did  not  obtain  arms  and  munitions  in 
the  largest  possible  quantities,  buying  factories  if  neces- 
sary. He  did  not  raise  a  great  army  at  the  outset.  He 
hesitated  to  use  his  forces  in  1861,  remaining  on  a  tame 
defensive.  He  did  not  try  to  win  a  diplomatic  victory  in 
Europe  by  any  means  possible  and  at  any  expense.  Instead, 
he  was  slow,  cautious,  conservative.  And  because  he  was 
so  the  Confederacy  lost  its  initial  advantage  and  the  Union 
gained  time — that  agency  that  was  so  adverse  to  the  South 
and  so  friendly  to  the  North  in  1861. 

Davis,  in  war  and  diplomacy  alike,  followed  the  course 
of  immediate  safety.  By  remaining  on  the  defensive  no 
military  risks  were  run;  by  abstaining  from  outside  bor- 
rowing Confederate  credit  remained  good;  by  making  no 
definite  engagements  with  England  the  government  kept 
its  hands  free.  In  the  autumn  of  1861,  Jefferson  Davis 
counted  on  the  cotton  famine  to  force  Europe  to  inter- 
vene. What  would  happen  if  Europe  did  not  intervene  he 
does  not  appear  to  have  considered..   Autumn  passed  with- 


162  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

out  Europe's  making  the  slightest  effort  in  behalf  of  the 
South. 

As  winter  came  on,  the  Confederate  government  realized 
that  the  war  would  reopen  with  vigor  in  the  spring.  The 
Union,  so  far  from  giving  up  the  contest,  was  training  a 
real  army  under  a  talented  organizer,  George  B.  McClellan. 
Davis,  therefore,  took  up  military  preparations  again,  and 
in  the  late  winter  the  government  showed  energy,  especially 
in  its  efforts  to  create  a  navy.  Mallory,  though  much  dis- 
liked, was  open-minded  enough  to  try  new  ideas,  and  South- 
ern naval  construction  went  far  toward  revolutionizing 
marine  warfare.  Without  shipyards  and  skilled  laborers, 
the  Confederates  built  the  Merrimac  and  other  improvised 
craft.  Later  the  Southern  engineers  invented  the  first  effec- 
tive marine  torpedoes  and  launched,  at  Charleston,  the  first 
submarine. 

The  Confederacy,  militarily,  was  handicapped  by  the  old- 
fashioned  and  artificial  system  of  departments.  The  coun- 
try was  divided  into  a  number  of  military  districts,  com- 
manded by  generals  independent  of  each  other  but  de- 
pendent on  Richmond.  One  department  might  be  in  straits 
for  men  while  troops  in  the  next  department  stood  idle.  Co- 
operation was  impossible  without  reference  to  Richmond, 
and  Richmond  was  far  away  from  most  of  the  country. 
The  situation  was  a  triumph  of  red  tape,  an  invitation  to 
disaster.  Worse,  the  ships  built  for  the  defense  of  New 
Orleans  were  built  partly  by  the  army,  partly  by  the  navy, 
with  the  natural  result  that  they  were  not  ready  when 
needed.  The  main  danger  to  the  defensive  system  was  the 
Mississippi  River,  which  gave  the  side  possessing  a  fleet  a 
great  advantage.  The  government,  away  off  at  Richmond, 
did  not  realize  the  importance  of  fortifying  the  Mississippi. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  163 

At  Montgomery,  Jefferson  Davis  would  have  been  in  touch 
with  the  West  and  some  of  the  mistakes  he  committed  would 
not  have  occurred.  The  very  situation  of  the  Southern  cap- 
ital suggested  that  a  commander  was  needed  for  the  whole 
West  with  large  powers. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  Davis  did  not  permit  his 
generals  a  wide  discretion.  His  military  training  made  him 
understand  the  danger  of  hampering  army  commanders  with 
too  definite  instructions.  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  in  the 
West  and  Joseph  E.  Johnston  in  the  East  largely  conducted 
their  campaigns  according  to  their  own  judgment.  But  the 
former  was  handicapped  by  having  only  a  department  to 
draw  from  when  he  needed  all  the  resources  of  the  West. 
The  Mississippi  Valley  was  lost  partly  because  of  the  Con- 
federate departmental  system.  That  system  followed  state 
lines  instead  of  natural  divisions.  It  should  have  centered 
around  the  Mississippi  River:  all  of  the  Confederacy  west 
of  the  Alleghanies  should  have  been  divided  into  two  de- 
partments— that  of  the  Upper  Valley  and  that  of  the  Lower 
Valley.  Such  a  system  would  have  allowed  a  concentra- 
tion of  troops  at  one  end  for  the  defense  of  New  Orleans 
and  at  the  other  for  that  of  Memphis  and  Vicksburg.  Be- 
cause the  Mississippi  was  the  dividing  line  of  departments, 
departmental  commanders  on  opposite  sides  of  the  river 
pursued  contrary  policies  at  critical  times.  The  fall  of 
Vicksburg  was  partly  due  to  this. 

The  many  departments  enabled  the  President  to  keep 
any  one  general  from  becoming  predominant,  but  he  did 
so  at  the  price  of  efficiency.  Beyond  doubt  Davis  was 
somewhat  jealous  of  his  prerogative  as  commander  in  chief 
and  resented  any  infringement.  But  his  confident  and  rather 
haughty  air  in  public  led  people  to  believe  that  he  was 


164  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

much  more  pragmatic  than  he  really  was.  Thus,  the  Ex- 
aminer said  of  him,  unfairly:  "Serene  upon  the  frigid 
heights  of  an  infallible  egoism  sat  Mr.  Davis,  wrapped  in 
sublime  self-complacency."  *  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Presi- 
dent was  frequently  anything  but  self-complacent  and  he 
often  followed  the  advice  of  his  councilors,  sometimes 
against  his  own  judgment.  Benjamin  had  great  weight  with 
him  at  first.  Lee  and  Seddon  did  later.  Seddon,  when  Sec- 
retary of  War,  actually  persuaded  Davis  to  give  Joseph  E. 
Johnston  what  was  almost  an  independent  command  in  the 
West.  This  shows  that  Jefferson  Davis,  jealous  as  he 
naturally  was,  sometimes  delegated  large  powers  to  others. 
He  was  by  no  means  the  narrow-minded  dictator,  set  in  his 
opinion,  that  he  has  so  frequently  been  represented  as  being. 

Jefferson  Davis  also  had  much  more  military  talent  than 
critics  have  credited  him  with.  It  has  been  pointed  out, 
notably  by  General  E.  P.  Alexander,  that  the  government 
overlooked  a  great  opportunity  in  not  making  use  of  the 
comparatively  short  railway  communication  between  Virginia 
and  Tennessee.  The  chances  of  the  Confederacy  would 
have  been  materially  increased  by  the  employment  of  the 
interior  lines  of  communication,  East  and  West,  and  the 
concentration  of  forces  at  threatened  points. 

The  critics  fail  to  realize  the  .poorness  of  railroad  com- 
munication in  the  Confederacy:  it  could  have  been  bettered 
only  by  the  most  strenuous  efforts  of  the  government.  Be- 
sides, the  generals  did  not  appreciate  the  value  of  the  in- 
terior lines,  and  the  government  can  hardly  be  held  re- 
sponsible for  their  oversight.  Lee  not  only  did  not  see  it 
but  he  opposed  the  use  of  interior  communications  when 
the  government  considered  just  this  thing.    In  May,  1863, 

'August   5,   1863. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  165 

Seddon  actually  made  preparations  to  send  troops  to  the  aid 
of  Vicksburg,  but  Lee's  opposition  killed  the  plan.  In 
September,  1863,  Longstreet  urged  the  sending  of  troops 
to  Tennessee;  and  this  time  the  government  sent  them, 
despite  Lee's  objections.  Chickamauga  followed,  vindicating 
the  move.  The  truth  is  that  Davis  and  Seddon  did  realize 
the  value  of  the  strategic  railways,  but  that  Lee  and  Joseph 
E.  Johnston  did  not.  In  this  important  point,  the  two  great 
generals  failed  to  anticipate  modern  war. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  not  a  military  genius  by  any  means, 
but  he  usually  had  good  military  ideas.  His  chief  mili- 
tary weakness  was  temperamental:  he  was  naturally  over- 
cautious. And  this  happened  to  be  a  vital  fault,  for  the 
Confederacy  was  a  bold  experiment.  Its  best  chance  of  suc- 
cess lay  in  audacity  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  before  the 
overwhelming  power  of  the  North  was  concentrated  against 
it.  As  it  happened,  the  fate  of  the  Confederacy  at  this 
time  rested  with  men  even  more  cautious  than  Davis — 
Johnston  and  Beauregard.  The  temerarious  ones,  Lee  and 
Jackson,  had  not  yet  come  to  the  fore.  The  government  and 
the  generals  remained  inactive  while  the  initiative  passed  to 
the  Union.  When  Lee,  by  a  series  of  great  victories,  over- 
came the  disadvantage  flowing  from  this  timidity  and  took 
the  offensive  himself,  the  opportunity  had  passed.  It  thus 
happened  that  the  strategic  mistake  of  the  South  was  two- 
fold: it  stood  on  the  defensive  when  aggression  offered  vic- 
tory; and  it  assumed  the  offensive  too  late,  when  the  de- 
fensive had  become  the  only  sound  policy. 

Davis  had  posted  small  bodies  of  troops  at  various  strate- 
gic points.  The  perils  of  this  defensive,  dispersive  system, 
which  seemed  to  him  to  involve  the  least  risks,  suddenly 
became  manifest  early  in  1862.    The  Washington  govern- 


166  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

merit  had  found  in  Halleck  a  man  able  to  devise  a  military 
policy.  The  Union  chief  of  staff  hit  on  the  plan  of  assailing 
the  Confederacy  wherever  naval  power  could  be  brought 
to  aid  the  army.  Thus  the  coasts  of  the  Carolinas  were  to 
be  attacked,  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  was  to°be  entered, 
and  Tennessee  was  to  be  penetrated  by  way  of  the  Ten- 
nessee and  Cumberland  rivers.  As  a  corollary,  Virginia 
was  to  be  invaded  from  Chesapeake  Bay.  The  control  of 
the  Mississippi  River  was  the  prime  objective.  This  policy 
resulted  in  the  victory  of  the  Union  after  many  tribulations. 
The  inaction  of  the  Confederate  government  in  the  autumn 
of  1 86 1  had  allowed  the  Union  time  in  which  to  muster  and 
train  large  armies,  and  the  military  situation  was  now  wholly 
reversed.  In  October,  1861,  Washington  was  to  be  had  for 
the  taking;  in  February,  1862,  the  Confederacy  was  in 
imminent  peril. 

By  the  beginning  of  1862,  therefore,  the  North  had  a 
military  policy.  The  South  had  none  and  never  developed 
one.  Confederate  strategy  was  always  piecemeal  and  un- 
related; almost  no  effort  was  made,  except  in  the  autumn  of 
1863,  to  coordinate  various  movements  for  a  common  end. 
Owing  to  the  wide  dispersion  of  the  Southern  forces,  the 
Union  commanders  were  able  to  select  their  objectives  at 
pleasure,  without  fear  of  a  counter-offensive.  The  Confed- 
erate government  had  done  little  in  the  way  of  recruiting  in 
the  winter ;  volunteering  had  ceased ;  its  forces  were  now 
everywhere  greatly  outnumbered,  and  it  was  unprepared  for 
the  storm  that  burst  on  it.  Yet  it  must  be  said  that  this 
was  the  fault  of  the  people  more  than  of  the  government:  the 
Southern  people,  after  the  battle  of  Manassas  and  months 
of  inaction,  thought  that  the  war  was  over. 

The  principal  danger  to  the  Confederate  defensive  line 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  167 

was  in  Tennessee.  Albert  Sidney  Johnston,  the  commander 
of  the  Tennessee  department,  reached  his  headquarters  at 
Nashville  late  in  1861.  He  was  dismayed  to  find  that  al- 
most no  defensive  measures  had  been  taken,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  public  thought  that  the  South  had  already  won. 
Johnston  was  a  soldier,  not  a  politician,  and  he  attempted  to 
arouse  the  people  to  a  sense  of  their  danger  with  little  suc- 
cess. He  was  regarded  as  the  prophet  of  a  wrath  that  was 
not  to  come.  Still  he  managed  to  raise  a  small  army,  with 
which  he  confronted  two  Union  forces  that  threatened  Ten- 
nessee, the  one  under  U.  S.  Grant  near  the  Mississippi  River, 
the  other  under  Don  Carlos  Buell  in  the  Kentucky  moun- 
tains. Johnston's  solution  of  a  difficult  strategic  problem 
was  commonplace.  Dividing  his  command,  he  sent  a  part 
to  hold  the  Tennessee  and  Cumberland  rivers  against  Grant, 
while  he  faced  Buell  with  the  remainder.  A  wiser  move 
would  have  been  to  throw  himself  on  Grant  with  his  whole 
force  and  leave  Buell  temporarily  unopposed. 

The  division  of  the  Southern  army  resulted  in  a  great 
misfortune.  The  detached  force,  under  incompetent  political 
generals,  held  Forts  Henry  and  Donelson,  which  Grant  be- 
sieged. The  amateurs  lost  their  heads  in  the  face  of  Grant's 
able  tactics  and  surrendered  their  army  at  Fort  Donelson. 
It  was  a  great  victory  for  the  North,  a  blow  from  which  the 
South  never  recovered.  The  Mississippi  River  as  far  as 
northern  Mississippi  was  lost,  together  with  the  western 
half  of  the  state  of  Tennessee. 

This  disaster,  together  with  the  loss  of  Roanoke  Island 
on  the  North  Carolina  coast,  awakened  the  South  from  its 
fool's  paradise.  The  people  realized,  with  a  sudden  shock, 
that  the  war  was  only  beginning,  that  the  North,  so  far 
from  conceding  Southern  independence,  was  about  to  put 


168  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

forth  gigantic  efforts  to  crush  secession.  The  passive  de- 
fensive was  crumbling  everywhere:  Europe  made  no  move 
toward  intervention.  It  was  evident  that  the  Confederacy- 
must  make  a  great  and  united  effort  if  it  would  save  itself. 

The  crowd  demanded  a  victim  to  atone  for  disasters  that 
were,  in  reality,  as  much  the  fruit  of  the  popular  over-con- 
fidence as  of  the  government's  defective  measures.  When 
Congress  met,  late  in  February,  for  its  first  regular  session, 
a  cry  arose  against  the  incumbent  in  the  war  office,  Benjamin. 
Davis's  old  opponent  in  Mississippi,  Henry  S.  Foote,  now  a 
member  of  Congress  from  Tennessee,  attacked  Benjamin 
bitterly,  and  a  committee  was  appointed  to  investigate  his 
conduct.1  The  President  found  it  necessary  to  make  a 
change,  while  at  the  same  time  he  was  angered  by  the 
criticisms  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  which  reflected  likewise 
on  himself.  Perhaps  he  was  not  really  sorry  to  remove 
Benjamin  from  a  post  for  which  he  was  unfitted,  but  he 
had  no  attention  of  humiliating  a  friend  who  had  labored 
conscientiously,  if  ineffectively,  in  the  war  office  and  who  had 
excellent  talents  in  other  lines.  The  place  of  Secretary 
of  State  happened- to  be  vacant.  It  had  been  passed  on  from 
Toombs  to  Hunter,  who  found  it  little  to  his  liking  and  re- 
signed. Davis  appointed  Benjamin  to  the  vacancy  and 
succeeded  in  getting  the  Senate  to  confirm  him.  Benjamin 
was  as  well  fitted  as  any  man  in  the  country  for  the  State 
portfolio,  but  he  was  already  intensely  unpopular  and  he 
remained  so  until  the  end  of  the  war.  His  unpopularity 
considerably  injured  Jefferson  Davis. 

This  incident  marks  a  period  in  Davis's  career.  For  the 
first  time,  he  was  facing  widespread  criticism.  All  the 
blame  for  the  disasters  of  1862  could  not  be  put  on  Benjamin 

1  Pierce  Butler,   Judah   P.  Benjamin,   255. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  169 

and  the  generals;  there  was  a  sudden  alteration  in  the  public 
attitude  toward  the  President.  In  fact,  he  had  been  caught 
napping.  Immersed  in  the  thought  of  foreign  intervention, 
he  had  failed  to  give  proper  attention  to  military  measures. 
Suddenly,  in  February,  1862,  it  became  evident  that  the 
national  defense  was  inadequate.  The  country  was  plunged 
at  one  step  from  serenity  into  consternation.  There  had 
long  been  private  condemnation  of  the  government:  for  in- 
stance, in  March,  1862,  Edmund  Rhett  said,  "Jeff  Davis  is 
conceited,  wrong-headed,  wranglesome,  obstinate,  a  traitor." 
Now  there  came  a  great  wave  of  public  questioning  that  left 
Davis's  popularity  permanently  undermined.  He  never 
again  occupied  the  high  place  in  the  esteem  of  the  country 
that  he  did  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1861. 

Under  such  disheartening  circumstances,  Jefferson  Davis 
was  inaugurated  as  regular  President,  on  February  22,  1862. 
He  had  been  elected  in  November,  1861,  for  a  term  of  six 
years.  Washington's  Birthday  had  been  selected  as  an 
inaugural  of  happy  memory,  but  the  omens  were  unfavor- 
able. The  weather  was  wretched,  with  an  unintermitting 
winter  rain.  When  Mrs.  Davis  set  forth  for  the  celebration, 
she  was  astonished  to  see  walking  on  each  side  of  the  car- 
riage four  solemn  negroes,  clad  in  black  and  wearing  white 
gloves.  On  questioning  her  coachman  she  was  informed, 
"Well,  ma'am,  you  tole  me  to  arrange  everything  as  it 
should  be ;  and  this  is  the  way  we  do  in  Richmon'  at  funerals 
and  sich-like." 

A  crowd  gathered  before  the  Washington  monument 
in  the  capital  square,  where  the  dingy  imitation  of  the  instal- 
lation of  a  United  States  President  took  place.  It  was  a 
small  performance  compared  with  Washington.  A  bishop 
tendered  the  oath  in  the  absence  of  a  chief  justice,  and  the 


170  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

President,  bareheaded  in  the  rain,  made  a  good  speech  which 
did  not  arouse  much  enthusiasm.  He  declared  that  the 
Southern  fortunes,  then  overshadowed,  would  soon  shine  out 
as  brightly  as  the  morrow's  sun.  He  proclaimed  the  victory 
that  was  sure  to  come.1 

That  evening  he  gave  his  first  public  reception,  and  all 
the  world  flowed  through  the  chambers  of  the  modest  house 
on  Clay  street  he  now  called  home.  Cabinet  members  and 
generals  rubbed  elbows  with  the  obscure.  Davis  moved 
through  the  crowd  with  his  "not  over-cordial  grasp,"  seek- 
ing for  once  to  unbend  his  austere  and  gloomy  manner.  He 
could  be  pleasant;  there  was  a  certain  magnetism  about  the 
man  that  captured  many.  Colonel  Fremantle  said  of  him, 
"Nothing  can  exceed  the  charm  of  his  manner,  which  is 
simple,  easy  and  most  fascinating."  But  genial  moods  were 
all  too  unfrequent.  Not  that  he  was  inaccessible — he  could 
easily  be  approached — but  that  he  was  overloaded  with  the 
burden  of  responsibility,  "as  if  the  weight  of  the  world  were 
on  his  shoulders."  His  invalid  temperament  threw  off  its 
cares  with  difficulty,  and  a  long  day  of  routine  labor,  much 
of  it  unhappily  trivial,  left  him  exhausted  at  nightfall. 

Yet  in  the  first  winter  of  the  war  he  often  allowed  himself 
an  hour's  relaxation.  Mrs.  Davis  was  at  home  to  a  small 
group  every  evening,  and  the  President  would  come  into  the 
drawing-room.  He  rarely  said  much,  preferring  to  listen  to 
his  wife's  bright  chatter.  When  he  did  speak,  it  was  to 
some  point.  He  liked  the  society  of  young  girls,  particularly 
that  of  Constance  Cary,  the  enfant  terrible  of  the  circle, 
who  amused  Richmond  with  her  pranks.  He  would  some- 
times grow  quite  confidential  with  sympathizing  women 
and  unburden  himself.    Yet  he  seldom  talked  long.    After 

aT.  C.  De  Leon,  Four  Years  In  Rebel  Capitals,  164. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  171 

an  hour  of  the  chat,  he  went  off  to  his  office  for  an  evening's 
labor  on  the  military  details  he  invested  with  such  pathetic 
importance. 

Socially,  Jefferson  Davis  was  very  frank  and  wholly 
unpretending.  "The  President,"  said  Mrs.  Chestnut, 
"walked  with  me  slowly  up  and  down  the  long  room,  and 
our  conversation  was  of  the  saddest.  Nobody  knows  so 
well  as  he  the  difficulties  which  beset  this  hard-driven  Con- 
federacy. He  has  a  voice  which  is  perfectly  modulated,  a 
comfort  in  this  loud  and  rough  soldier  world.  I  think  there 
is  a  melancholy  cadence  in  his  voice  at  times  of  which  he 
is  unconscious."  1 

And  on  another  occasion  she  had  this  to  say:  "We  went 
to  the  White  House.  They  gave  us  tea.  The  President  said 
he  had  been  on  the  way  to  our  house,  coming  with  all  the 
Davis  family  to  see  me,  but  the  children  became  so  trouble- 
some they  turned  back.  Just  then,  little  Joe  rushed  in  and 
insisted  on  saying  his  prayers  at  his  father's  knee,  then  and 
there.    He  was  in  his  night  clothes." 

In  the  year  of  his  provisional  presidency,  Jefferson  Davis 
had  done  much  and  also  failed  to  do  much.  The  South  had 
looked  on  while  the  North  bent  painfully  to  the  task  of  sub- 
duing the  seceding  states.  The  North  had  toiled  terribly. 
It  had  adapted  itself  to  a  new  economic  situation,  managed 
to  finance  the  war,  manufactured  vast  quantities  of  arms  and 
ammunition,  raised  a  great  army  and  built  a  great  navy. 
The  situation  of  the  year  before  was  reversed:  then  it  had 
seemed  that  the  Union  was  about  to  crumble  into  pieces 
while  a  triumphant  South  pursued  its  own  independent  des- 
tiny. But  the  South  had  made  the  mistake  of  giving  the 
North  time  to  bring  its  mighty  mechanical  resources  to 

*Mrs.  Chestnut,  274. 


172  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

bear,  and  now  the  downfall  of  the  Confederacy  was  immi- 
nent. Such  had  been  the  change  wrought  by  a  great  govern- 
ment and  an  energetic  people.  As  spring  advanced,  Con- 
federate disaster  continued.  In  April,  New  Orleans  fell 
after  a  feeble  resistance,  and  the  one  large  city  of  the  South 
passed  into  the  enemy's  hands,  a  blow  which  the  Confed- 
eracy felt  to  the  end.  New  Orleans  was  really  a  sacrifice  to 
the  bad  position  of  the  Southern  capital,  for  the  govern- 
ment, under  the  wretched  transportation  conditions,  could 
not  give  the  distant  city  the  needed  attention.  In  Virginia, 
Joseph  E.  Johnston's  force  confronted  a  well-trained  and 
splendidly-equipped  army  under  George  B.  McClellan.  In 
Tennessee,  Grant  and  Buell  were  converging  for  the  con- 
quest of  that  state. 

After  Fort  Donelson,  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  had  become 
bitterly  unpopular,  the  inevitable  consequence  of  failure. 
Strong  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  to  force  his  removal, 
but  Davis,  wise  in  this  instance,  refused  to  bend  to  the 
clamor.  "If  Sidney  Johnston  is  not  a  general,"  he  said 
pathetically,  "I  have  none  to  give  you."  Johnston  was  so 
stung  by  criticism  that  he  wished  to  transfer  the  active 
command  of  the  army  to  his  subordinate,  Beauregard,  who 
had  been  sent  to  him  from  Virginia.  Beauregard  refused  the 
command  but  urged  Johnston  to  attack  Grant  before  Buell 
joined  him. 

Grant  was  at  Pittsburg  Landing,  or  Shiloh,  on  the  Ten- 
nessee River;  Buell  was  not  far  away.  The  Confederates 
advanced,  hoping  to  take  the  former  by  surprise  and,  in  the 
early  morning  of  April  6,  1862,  assaulted  the  Union  lines. 
They  stormed  the  rough  defenses  of  logs  and  drove  the 
Unionists  back  to  the  river,  capturing  thousands  of  prisoners. 
The  broken  ground,  however,  delayed  the  assailants,  and 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  173 

Johnston  was  killed.  The  result  was  that  a  part  of  the 
Union  army  still  held  the  bluff  overlooking  the  Tennessee 
when  twilight  fell  on  the  field.  The  Southerners  had  won  the 
day  but  they  had  failed  of  complete  success  in  a  situation 
where  not  to  win  decisively  was  to  lose.  In  the  night  Buell 
joined  Grant,  and  the  next  morning  the  combined  army  ad- 
vanced against  the  Confederates,  now  under  Beauregard. 
The  Unionists  regained  the  field,  and  the  Confederates  re- 
treated to  Corinth,  in  northern  Mississippi.  Thus  the  battle 
of  Shiloh  turned  out  to  be  a  Southern  defeat  after  a  great 
initial  success. 

The  people  were  shocked  by  the  loss  of  a  battle  which  had, 
from  the  first  reports,  seemed  to  be  a  great  victory.  They 
attributed  the  result  to  the  death  of  Johnston,  who  has 
ever  since  been  hailed  as  the  lost  genius  of  the  South.  Not 
improbably,  however,  he  was  fortunate  in  his  glorious  death, 
for  he  had  shown  no  marked  strategic  ability  in  his  brief 
command  and  he  had  terrible  problems  to  face.  Beauregard 
fell  back  from  Corinth  to  Tupelo.  Meanwhile,  Davis  was 
making  every  effort  to  reenforce  him,  telegraphing  the  gov- 
ernors of  all  the  lower  South  states  to  send  troops.  Until 
they  responded,  the  Confederate  cause  in  the  West  seemed 
on  the  point  of  collapse. 

The  Union  prospects  were  brilliant  both  in  the  East  and 
West  as  Davis's  system  of  passive  defense,  based  on  wide 
distribution  of  troops  instead  of  the  use  of  interior  lines, 
failed  everywhere.  Yet  the  Washington  government  was 
not  disposed  to  overrate  the  chances  or  to  lose  the  opportu- 
nity offered  by  the  rise  of  the  Union  prospects  to  open  in- 
direct negotiations  with  Jefferson  Davis  looking  to  a  recon- 
ciliation. Count  Mercier,  the  French  minister,  came  to 
Richmond  with  a  charge  from  Seward  to  sound  the  Confed- 


174  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

erate  government.  Mercier  did  not  meet  Davis,  but  he  dealt 
with  a  politician  close  to  the  latter,  James  Lyons.  He  of- 
fered guarantees  on  the  subject  of  slavery  in  return  for  the 
abandonment  of  the  secession  movement.  Davis  gave  no 
definite  reply,  and  Mercier  returned  to  Washington  without 
having  accomplished  anything.  Shortly  afterward  the 
French  consul  in  Richmond,  Paul,  told  Lyons  that  Napoleon 
III  was  willing  to  recognize  the  Confederacy  if  slavery  were 
gradually  abolished.  Again  Lyons  sought  Davis,  who  said, 
"I  should  concur  with  you  in  accepting  these  terms  but  for 
the  constitutional  difficulty.  You  know  that  Congress  has 
no  jurisdiction  over  the  subject  of  slavery."  1  Lyons  then 
suggested  that  the  individual  states  might  be  induced  to 
abolish  slavery,  and  Davis  asked  if  France  could  not  deal 
directly  with  them.  Lyons  replied  that  France  would  not 
go  behind  the  Confederate  government.  The  President 
ended  the  interview  by  stating  that  he  would  bring  the 
matter  before  the  cabinet.  Nothing  came  of  the  suggestion 
at  this  time,  but  before  the  end  the  Southern  government 
expressed  to  France  its  willingness  to  sacrifice  slavery, 
malgre  the  constitution. 

In  the  meantime  McClellan  was  actively  preparing  to  take 
Richmond.  Instead  of  trying  the  overland  route,  he  trans- 
ferred his  army  to  Fortress  Monroe,  with  the  intention  of 
advancing  up  the  peninsula  between  the  York  and  James 
Rivers.  Johnston  moved  from  northern  Virginia  to  the 
peninsula  to  meet  him.  The  Southern  army  was  so  greatly 
outnumbered  that  the  chance  of  holding  Richmond  seemed 
small.  A  council  of  war  was  held  in  the  middle  of  April, 
1862.  The  President,  George  Washington  Randolph,  the 
new  Secretary  of  War,  Robert  E.  Lee,  Joseph  E.  Johnston, 

1  Southern  Historical  Society  Papers,  7,  357. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  175 

Gustavus  W.  Smith  and  James  Longstreet  were  present. 
The  conference  continued  all  day  and  until  well  into  the 
night.  Smith,  the  spokesman,  presented  two  plans.  One 
was  to  concentrate  all  available  troops  at  Richmond  for  the 
defense  of  the  city;  the  other  was  to  garrison  the  capital 
for  a  siege  and  invade  the  North  with  the  main  army.  Smith 
declared  himself  in  favor  of  the  latter  plan.  Johnston  then 
urged  the  evacuation  of  the  peninsula  because  it  was  com- 
manded from  the  water.  Lee  opposed  evacuation,  insisting 
that  the  peninsula  could  be  held.  A  heated  discussion  fol- 
lowed. Longstreet  agreed  with  Johnston,  Davis  with  Lee. 
At  last  it  was  decided  to  fight  at  Yorktown,  scene  of  Wash- 
ington's triumph  of  eighty  years  before.1  In  this  council, 
Davis  displayed  his  strategic  preference,  which  was  for  fight- 
ing, even  in  a  dangerous  position,  rather  than  retreating. 
He  hated  retreat  beyond  all  other  things. 

The  Confederacy  was  rescued  for  the  time  by  the  energy 
and  decision  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  the  labors  of  one  great 
man  of  action  who  now  appeared  on  the  scene,  Robert  E. 
Lee.  When  it  became  evident,  in  February,  1862,  that  it 
would  not  do  to  wait  longer  on  European  intervention  and 
that  the  army  must  be  increased  without  delay,  Jefferson 
Davis  acted  with  great  vigor.  Congress,  at  his  dictation, 
passed  a  conscription  act  that  brought  thousands  of  men  to 
the  colors.  It  would  seem  that  a  draft  was  unavoidable,  for 
volunteering  had  practically  ceased  and  war  cannot  be  made 
without  soldiers,  and  yet  no  measure  of  the  government 
awakened  such  bitter  criticism  and  opposition  as  this  act  of 
self-preservation.  Stephens  denounced  the  draft  for  the 
whole  length  of  the  war.  In  his  view  the  cause  had  better 
fall  and  the  South  be  conquered  rather  than  that  the  govern- 

1A  Memoir,  2,  263.     Smith,  44. 


176  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

ment  should  take  a  step  which  was  an  encroachment  on 
states'  rights.  Thus,  to  Davis's  other  burdens,  surely  heavy 
enough,  were  added  the  complaints  of  sticklers  for  strict 
constitutionality  on  the  part  of  a  government  which  had  not 
yet  won  its  title  to  existence.  At  the  same  time,  it  is 
necessary  to  do  justice  to  the  constitutionalists.  They 
stood  for  a  great  principle,  one  which  has,  in  no  small  degree, 
madt  modern  history.  According  to  the  strict  construction 
view  of  the  United  States  Constitution,  which  was  also  the 
Confederate  constitution,  conscription  by  the  federal  gov- 
ernment was  of  doubtful  legality.  To  Davis,  violation  of 
the  constitution  seemed  better  than  ruin;  to  the  strict  con- 
stitutionalists, ruin  seemed  preferable. 

That  Jefferson  Dp'is,  in  defiance  of  states'  rights,  had  the 
courage  to  initiate  tne  first  general  draft  in  American  his- 
tory, and  the  power  to  force  it  on  the  South,  is  proof  that 
he  possessed  some  great  qualities.  This  was  his  supreme 
moment.  He  had  miscalculated  in  the  autumn  of  1861, 
hoping  for  foreign  intervention,  and  the  country  was  unpre- 
pared for  the  Northern  offensive  when  it  came.  Realizing 
the  dire  need,  the  President  acted  so  swiftly  and  unhesitat- 
ingly that  in  a  short  time  the  Confederate  forces  doubled. 
Men  poured  into  the  training  camps  in  myriads.  They  were 
drilled  and  equipped  with  commendable  celerity. 

Davis  also  acted  most  wisely  in  choosing  Lee  as  his  lieu- 
tenant, as  he  did  at  this  juncture.  Up  to  this  time  Lee  had 
been  somewhat  of  a  disappointment.  He  had  failed  in  an 
almost  impossible  campaign  in  the  mountains  of  Virginia 
and  had  spent  the  winter  in  looking  after  the  defenses  of 
the  South  Carolina  coast.  In  the  early  spring  of  1862,  he 
was  considered  an  engineer  officer  rather  than  a  field  com- 
mander, and  there  was  some  hostile  comment  when  the 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  177 

President  made  him  military  adviser  with  a  general  super- 
vision of  the  Eastern  forces.  For  a  time  he  was  given  a  free 
rein.  The  result  was  immediately  evident.  Abandoning  the 
dispersive  defensive  system,  Lee  quickly  concentrated  troops 
in  Virginia  until  the  army  rose  to  80,000  men,  a  force  capable 
of  opposing  McClellan. 

Johnston  retreated  up  the  peninsula.  Strategically  he  was 
right,  for  the  York  and  lower  James  could  have  been  held 
only  with  much  difficulty  against  an  army  aided  by  a  fleet  of 
gunboats;  this  was  simply  one  of  the  disadvantages  of  Rich- 
mond as  a  capital.  Falling  back  to  the  Chickahominy,  John- 
ston informed  Davis  that  he  would  fight  McClellan  there. 
The  cabinet,  which  was  in  session  at  the  time,  heard  this 
news  with  some  distrust,  for  the  army,  if  defeated,  would 
have  to  cross  a  deep  and  dangerous  stream  with  poor  bridges. 
A  suggestion  was  made  that  the  President  should  call  John- 
ston's attention  to  the  peril  of  the  position.  This  Davis 
positively  declined  to  do,  declaring  that  when  he  trusted  a 
general  with  a  command  he  left  him  free  to  act  according 
to  his  judgment.  Besides,  he  wanted  a  battle.  Fearing  for 
the  capital,  he  impatiently  waited  for  Johnston  to  make  a 
stand. 

Johnston,  however,  understood  his  danger.  He  retreated 
across  the  Chickahominy  to  the  outskirts  of  Richmond, 
though  without  letting  the  government  know  of  his  change  of 
plan.  Davis,  riding  out  with  Postmaster- General  Reagan, 
came  suddenly  on  a  camp  of  troops.  On  inquiry,  the  Presi- 
dent was  disagreeably  surprised  to  learn  that  they  belonged 
to  Johnston's  army.  He  was  troubled;  "his  face  took  on  a 
look  of  pain."  x  He  had  not  been  consulted  in  a  movement 
of  the  utmost  importance.    The  meeting  between  the  Presi- 

1John  H.  Reagan,  Memoirs,  138. 


178  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

dent  and  the  general  was  stormy.  Davis  demanded  why  the 
latter  had  not  contested  the  Chickahominy.  Johnston  an- 
swered, unconvincingly,  that  the  troops  were  out  of  pro- 
visions and  that  the  position  was  marshy  and  unhealthy. 
After  a  pause,  Davis  went  on  to  ask  whether  Richmond  was 
to  be  abandoned  without  a  fight.  Johnston  made  no  positive 
reply.  "If  you  will  not  give  battle,"  said  Davis,  "I  will 
appoint  some  one  to  command  who  will." 

The  President  then  sent  for  Lee,  the  military  adviser, 
and  poured  out  his  dissatisfaction  with  Johnston.  He  thought 
that  McClellan  should  be  attacked  at  once,  before  he  crossed 
the  Chickahominy.  Lee  assented  and  talked  with  Johnston.1 
As  a  result,  it  was  decided  to  take  the  offensive. 

Johnston,  compelled  to  fight,  assaulted  a  part  of  McClel- 
land army  which  had  crossed  the  Chickahominy  in  advance 
of  the  main  body.  The  Southern  troops  were  in  superior 
force,  but  they  were  badly  handled  by  an  amateur  staff  in 
a  forest  region,  and  the  battle  became  nothing  but  a  series 
of  fierce  actions  by  separate  commands.  The  Unionists  were 
not  crushed  and  Johnston's  effort  ended  in  failure.  The 
battle  of  Seven  Pines  was,  nevertheless,  of  great  importance, 
for  the  Confederate  commander  was  wounded  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Robert  E.  Lee,  who  now  began  his  wonderful 
career. 

Davis,  without  a  moment's  hesitation,  assigned  the  com- 
mand of  the  army  to  Lee,  although  the  latter 's  reputation 
was  still  at  nadir  and  there  were  other  generals  who  might 
have  been  tried.  In  this  instance  he  showed  rare  judgment 
and  quickness  of  decision  in  a  very  dangerous  crisis.  He 
reaped  his  reward  in  finding  a  general  who  was,  in  some 
respects,  the  foremost  of  modern  commanders  and  whose 

1 A  Memoir,  2,  276. 


THE  FIRST  CRISIS  179 

prowess  almost  turned  the  balance  in  favor  of  the 
South. 

In  the  pause  that  followed  Seven  Pines,  Stonewall  Jack- 
son completed  his  famous  Valley  campaign,  begun  some 
weeks  before.  Routing  several  small  forces,  he  so  terrified 
Washington  that  bodies  of  troops  needed  by  McClellan  were 
kept  for  the  safety  of  the  Union  capital.  Taking  advantage 
of  this  dispersal,  Lee  drew  Jackson  quickly  to  him  and  pre- 
pared to  attack  McClellan.  The  Union  commander  had 
thrown  up  fortifications  before  Richmond  and  was  about  to 
lay  siege  to  it.  With  his  force,  this  was  the  wisest  course, 
but  it  reckoned  without  the  audacity  of  Lee. 

In  the  last  days  of  June,  Lee  threw  his  troops  on  a  part 
of  the  Union  army  north  of  the  Chickahominy,  leaving  but 
a  slender  detachment  in  front  of  Richmond.  The  Union 
right  wing  was  crushed  in  the  fierce  engagement  of  Gaines's 
Mill,  but  it  was  not  destroyed.  McClellan,  withdrawing  it 
to  the  south  bank  of  the  stream,  began  a  precipitate  retreat 
to  the  James,  where  his  gunboats  lay.  For  a  time  he  was  in 
peril.  Lee  sought  to  block  the  way  to  the  James  and  sur- 
round the  Union  host  in  the  marshes  of  the  Chickahominy. 
But  his  plans  went  awry,  and  McClellan  escaped.  He  even 
turned  at  Malvern  Hill  and  inflicted  a  bloody  repulse  on  the 
pursuers.  Yet  a  large  army,  which  had  threatened  the 
Southern  capital  but  a  week  before,  had  been  beaten,  and 
Lee's  fame  was  world-wide. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  constantly  on  the  scene  in  this  strug- 
gle at  the  doors  of  Richmond.  He  sought  to  gratify  his  am- 
bition to  take  a  hand  in  directing  the  army  in  battle,  but  Lee 
snubbed  him.  At  the  opening  engagement  of  the  Seven 
Days,  Davis  rode  on  the  field  accompanied  by  a  number 
of  staff  officers  and  civilians.    Lee  was  found  in  the  middle 


180  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

of  a  road  engrossed  in  directing  an  attack.  Shot  from  the 
enemy's  cannon  flew  by,  occasionally  killing  a  man  or  a 
horse.  The  general  was  visibly  annoyed  at  the  irruption  of 
the  cavalcade.  He  demanded  of  Davis  in  a  tone  of  irrita- 
tion, "Who  are  all  this  army  of  people,  and  what  are  they 
doing  here?" 

Davis,  taken  back,  replied  conciliatingly,  "It  is  not  my 
army,  general." 

"It  is  certainly  not  my  army,  Mr.  President,"  Lee  re- 
torted; "and  this  is  no  place  for  it." 

"Well,  general,"  said  the  President,  "if  I  withdraw,  per- 
haps they  will  follow." 

Turning  his  horse's  head,  he  rode  away,  leaving  Lee  to 
conduct  the  engagement  unassisted. 

After  this,  Davis  kept  farther  in  the  rear,  though  he  fol- 
lowed the  army  in  its  movement  toward  the  James,  offering 
advice  which  Lee  did  not  much  heed.  Even  as  late  as  1863, 
Jefferson  Davis  still  dreamed  at  times  of  taking  command 
of  the  army  and  winning  a  decisive  battle.  "If  I  could  take 
one  wing  and  Lee  the  other,"  he  said,  "I  think  we  could 
between  us  wrest  a  victory  from  those  people." 


VIII 

A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY 

THE  military  situation  in  the  East  was  utterly  changed 
by  Lee's  great  victory.  In  the  West,  however,  there 
was  no  improvement.  By  this  time  Davis  had  lost  all  con- 
fidence in  Beauregard.  The  general  believed  himself  to  be 
the  victim  of  prejudice,  but  it  seems  likely  that  the  President 
considered  him  a  timid  defensive  commander  who  had  failed 
to  complete  the  victory  at  Shiloh  and  could  not  be  relied  on 
for  vigorous  tactics.  He  accordingly  took  advantage  of 
Beauregard's  absence  from  the  army  on  account  of  sickness 
to  replace  him  with  Braxton  Bragg,  one  of  his  subordinates. 
Bragg  had  commanded  a  division  at  Shiloh  and  Davis  held 
him  to  be  an  excellent  soldier,  but  he  was  an  unfortunate 
selection.  A  dyspeptic  and  a  martinet,  he  was  never  popu- 
lar with  his  officers  and  men.  His  face  looks  at  us  from  his 
pictures,  tense,  excited,  wanting  in  self-control. 

Beauregard's  displacement  was  greatly  resented  in  Loui- 
siana. Some  months  later,  a  Louisiana  delegation  visited  the 
President  to  urge  his  reinstatement  in  command.  Davis  dis- 
concerted his  visitors  by  taking  their  petition  and  reading 
it  aloud  with  a  running  fire  of  comment.  Then  he  declared 
that  Beauregard  had  left  his  post  without  permission  and 
that  he  would  not  restore  him.1  The  delegation  took  its 
departure,  much  disgruntled. 

1  C.  J.  Villere,  Review  of  Certain  Remarks  Made  by  the  President. 

181 


182  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Beauregard  had,  in  reality,  given  way  to  a  soldier  not  so 
much  unlike  him  as  the  President  supposed.  It  is  true  that 
Bragg  would  fight,  but  his  nerves  proved  unequal  to  the 
strain  of  command.  Indeed,  all  the  leading  Confederate  gen- 
erals showed  the  effect  of  their  terrible  responsibility  except 
Lee,  whose  perfect  mental  and  physical  poise  was  undis- 
turbed by  any  crisis,  and  Jackson,  who  was  always  sick  in 
peace  and  always  well  in  war.  Bragg  had  not  held  high 
rank  in  the  United  States  army,  and  his  appointment  was 
in  the  nature  of  an  experiment.  As  in  the  case  of  Jefferson 
Davis's  other  experiments,  he  was  a  failure.  Davis  was 
seldom  successful  in  the  choice  of  generals  except  of  tried 
veterans  such  as  Lee. 

In  the  West  the  war  stood  still  for  a  time.  Not  so  in 
Virginia.  Another  Union  army,  under  John  Pope,  advanced 
from  Washington  into  northern  Virginia.  Lee,  satisfied  that 
McClellan,  who  was  still  on  the  James  below  Richmond, 
was  no  longer  dangerous,  turned  on  Pope.  Audaciously  leav- 
ing the  capital  almost  unguarded,  he  suddenly  transferred  his 
forces  to  the  upper  Rappahannock.  He  sent  Jackson  ahead 
to  turn  Pope's  flank  and  followed  with  the  rest  of  the  army. 
Pope  attacked  Jackson,  who  held  him  off  until  Lee  and 
Longstreet  arrived.  The  united  Southern  army  then  routed 
the  Unionists  and  drove  them  back  into  the  fortifications 
around  Washington.  The  Second  Manassas  was  a  master- 
piece of  military  art. 

By  two  brilliant  victories,  Lee  had  changed  the  whole  out- 
look of  the  war.  The  world  began  to  think  that  the  Union 
armies  could  not  stand  before  the  Southerners.  Richmond 
was  now  safe,  Washington  in  danger.  Coincidentally,  Con- 
federate prospects  brightened  in  the  West.  Bragg  had  as- 
sembled a  formidable  army  and,  more  enterprising  than 


A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY  183 

Beauregard  if  not  more  fortunate,  advanced  across  Ten- 
nessee into  Kentucky.  An  independent  force  under  Kirby 
Smith  moved  on  parallel  lines.  The  capture  of  Louisville 
and  Cincinnati  seemed  not  unlikely.  On  the  other  side  of 
the  Mississippi,  Earl  Van  Dorn  was  moving  northward  with 
a  considerable  force.  Everywhere  the  Confederates  were  on 
the  aggressive. 

In  the  East,  Lee  sought  to  utilize  his  victory  at  Second 
Manassas  by  invading  the  North.  In  September,  1862,  the 
Southern  army  crossed  the  Potomac  while  the  world  looked 
on  in  expectation  of  the  fall  of  Washington.  The  advance 
should  have  been  made  a  year  before,  when  great  results 
might  have  flowed  from  it.  Davis  had  opposed  invasion 
then:  now  he  consented  because  he  had  confidence  in  Lee. 
He  still  hoped  that  Maryland  might  secede,  or  at  least  that 
Mary  landers  would  flock  into  Lee's  camp  and  swell  his 
army.  But  the  movement  was  made  too  soon,  before  Lee's 
troops  had  had  time  to  recover  from  the  exhaustion  of  the 
preceding  campaign.  It  was,  therefore,  with  an  army  too 
small  for  a  serious  invasion  that  Lee  entered  Maryland:  he 
had  force  enough  only  for  a  raid. 

It  would  have  been  better  if  the  Southern  commander  had 
recognized  this  fact  and  had  acted  accordingly.  Dividing 
his  army,  he  sent  Jackson  to  capture  Harper's  Ferry,  while 
with  the  other  half  he  faced  McClellan,  who  had  been 
brought  back  from  the  James  in  haste  to  defend  the  Union 
capital.  Accidentally  informed  of  Lee's  plans  by  means  of 
a  lost  dispatch,  McClellan  sought  to  intervene  between  Lee 
and  Jackson. 

Lee  was  in  peril,  but  Harper's  Ferry  surrendered,  with 
13,000  Union  troops,  and  Jackson  hastened  to  join  him  be- 
fore he  was  brought  to  bay.    Lee  now  made  his  first  m> 


184  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

portant  mistake.  He  might  have  retreated  across  the  Po- 
tomac River  with  the  fruits  of  a  successful  raid.  If  he  re- 
mained, he  would  have  to  fight  a  battle  near  the  river  on  a 
field  where  defeat  meant  ruin  and  where  decisive  victory 
was  impossible.  He  had  but  35,000  men  against  McClellan's 
90,000,  and  the  Union  position  was  also  stronger.  Long- 
street  advised  withdrawal,  and  even  the  fierce  Jackson  did 
not  urge  battle.  But  retreat  in  face  of  the  enemy  was 
difficult  for  a  soldier  of  Lee's  fighting  proclivities,  and  he 
decided  to  hold  his  ground. 

The  engagement  which  followed  at  Sharpsburg,  or  An- 
tietam,  was  a  glorious  testimony  to  American  manhood,  to 
the  Nordic  virtue  of  North  and  South  alike.  For  the  length 
of  a  summer  day  the  Southerners,  unsheltered  by  trenches, 
endured  the  frightful  fire  of  the  superior  Northern  artillery 
and  beat  off  innumerable  infantry  attacks.  They  showed  a 
steadiness  more  than  Roman  and  perished  by  whole  regi- 
ments. When  night  fell  on  the  most  terrible  day  in  Ameri- 
can history,  they  still  clung  to  their  position,  though  in  places 
the  dead  alone  held  the  Confederate  line.  As  for  the  Union 
troops,  mowed  down  by  the  withering  fire  of  the  Southern 
infantry  and  artillery  at  close  range,  they  proved  that  their 
morale  was  not  affected  by  the  Second  Manassas  and  that 
they  could  stand  the  most  staggering  losses  without  flinching. 

McClellan  did  not  attack  next  day,  and  the  honors  of  a 
bare  defensive  victory  were  with  Lee.  But  he  could  not 
assume  the  offensive  in  turn  for  lack  of  men,  and  there  was 
no  other  course  for  him  but  to  withdraw  into  Virginia,  which 
he  did  in  safety.  Though  a  tactical  victory,  Sharpsburg 
was  a  strategic  and  political  defeat  for  the  South  of  great 
magnitude.  In  fact,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  single 
conflict  of  the  war  it  was  the  decisive  battle. 


A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY  185 

It  weakened  the  fast-growing  belief  in  Europe  that  Lee 
could  win  victories  against  any  odds.  After  the  overthrow 
of  McClellan  in  the  Seven  Days  and  Pope  at  the  Second 
Manassas,  the  world  had  begun  to  think  that  anything  was 
possible  for  the  great  commander  whose  star  had  risen  so 
suddenly,  and  there  was  a  widespread  conviction  that  the 
South  would  win.  The  North  was  in  the  depths  of  despond- 
ency at  the  utter  failure  of  its  mighty  effort  to  subdue  the 
seceding  states.  Lee,  knowing  this,  had  suggested  to  Davis 
that  it  would  be  well  to  open  peace  negotiations  with  Wash- 
ington when  he  crossed  the  Potomac.1  More  important  but 
unknown  to  both  belligerents,  the  British  government  was 
seriously  considering  intervention.  If  Lee  had  won  a  third 
great  victory,  and  on  Northern  soil,  the  British  government 
would  probably  have  considered  the  chances  of  Union  suc- 
cess in  the  war  so  slight  as  to  justify  interference.  But 
when  it  became  evident,  at  Sharpsburg,  that  the  South  was 
not  strong  enough  to  invade  the  North,  English  opinion 
changed.  The  London  government  did  not  intervene  and 
never  came  so  near  intervention  again.2 

By  a  singular  fate,  the  invasion  of  Kentucky  likewise 
failed.  Kirby  Smith  won  a  victory  at  Richmond  and  Bragg 
one  at  Perryville,  but  the  Confederate  commanders  did  not 
act  together  and  Bragg  let  himself  be  outgeneraled.  He  fell 
back  into  Tennessee,  and  thus  a  movement  that  promised 
the  happiest  results  came  to  nothing.  Kentucky  was  defi- 
nitely lost  to  the  Confederacy,  and  the  Southerners  were 
never  again  on  the  offensive  in  the  West. 

Yet  the  South  still  possessed  a  strong  army  in  Tennessee, 
and  the  prospects  were  better  in  the  late  autumn  than  they 

1  Official  Records,  War  of  the  Rebellion,  Series  i,  19,  Part  II,  591. 

2  Henry  Adams,  The  Education  of  Henry  Adams. 


186  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

had  been  in  the  spring.  Everything  depended  on  the  com- 
mander, however,  and  just  here  Jefferson  Davis  made  a  vital 
mistake. 

By  this  time  Braxton  Bragg  had  proved  that  he  was  not 
a  very  competent  commander.  He  was  but  a  passable 
mediocrity  at  best,  and  passable  mediocrities  seldom  win 
wars.  He  had  not  only  missed  great  opportunities  but  he 
had  lost  the  confidence  and  respect  of  the  army.  The  hour 
had  come  for  his  removal.  It  was  not  as  if  the  South  had 
no  better  soldier  to  put  in  his  place.  Stonewall  Jackson,  both 
in  independent  command  and  as  Lee's  principal  subordinate, 
had  shown  great  military  qualities.  Every  consideration 
urged  that  he  be  given  the  place  of  Bragg.  Yet  Davis  does 
not  even  seem  to  have  thought  of  him  for  the  Western  com- 
mand. He  was  content  to  leave  in  a  secondary  position  a 
heaven-sent  strategist  and  to  continue  in  the  most  vital 
post  in  the  Confederacy  a  man  who  had  already  shown  that 
nothing  much  was  to  be  hoped  for  from  him.  Still  no  one 
else  in  authority  seems  to  have  thought  of  Jackson,  who  had 
shown  peculiar  genius  at  the  head  of  a  separate  army,  as 
anything  but  Lee's  chief  lieutenant. 

The  repulse  of  the  South  from  Maryland  and  Kentucky 
was  attended  by  other  discouraging  symptoms.  The  South 
was  beginning  to  feel  the  pressure  of  the  war  acutely.  The 
blockade  had  largely  cut  the  country  off  from  foreign  com- 
merce, and  cotton  lay  heaped  in  great  piles  at  wharves  and 
stations.  There  was  a  lack  of  fabrics  and  metals,  while  the 
railroads,  unrepaired  and  unaided  by  the  government,  were 
rapidly  deteriorating.  The  value  of  the  paper  currency  was 
steadily  falling.  Dissatisfaction  had  become  widespread. 
A  number  of  the  newspapers  now  opposed  the  government; 
the  trenchant  criticisms  of  John  M.  Daniel,  the  famous  editor 


A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY  187 

of  the  Richmond  Examiner,  and  those  of  the  Charleston 
Mercury  were  especially  influential.  There  was  absolutely 
no  censorship  or  any  other  form  of  restraint  on  the  press  of 
the  Confederacy,  which,  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound  since 
it  was  fighting  on  the  side  of  slavery,  was  about  the  freest 
country  that  ever  went  to  war. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  also  lost  the  support  of  the  politicians. 
Rhett,  Stephens,  Yancey  and  Toombs  had  been  joined  by 
Wigfall.  Davis  had  alienated  the  influential  Texas  senator 
by  the  same  tactlessness  that  had  won  him  many  enemies, 
that  tendency  of  his  to  play  the  master  and  administer  re- 
buke, that  failure  to  seem  to  listen  to  advice.  Jefferson 
Davis  was  not  conciliatory  enough  for  a  man  in  his  position ; 
he  constantly  forgot  that  he  was  not  the  head  of  an  estab- 
lished government  but  a  revolutionary  chief  with  his  way 
to  make.  He  needed  to  grapple  men  to  him,  and  he  alienated 
them  instead.  The  planter  politicians,  reduced  to  impotence 
by  their  own  act  in  endowing  the  executive  with  supreme 
power,  were  none  the  less  humanly  resentful  at  the  conse- 
quences of  their  act.  Davis  did  nothing  to  soothe  their 
helplessness:  they  left  his  presence  enraged  by  curt  refusals 
or  tart  rejoinders.  Not  that  he  meant  to  offend.  His  nerves 
were  awry;  people  annoyed  him,  and  he  was  never  prudent 
in  speech. 

He  cooled  WigfalFs  friendship  by  a  sharp  reproof  for  a 
criticism  of  one  of  the  presidential  favorites,  the  incompe- 
tent General  Holmes,  who  was  a  complete  failure  in  several 
responsible  positions.  The  alienation  was  made  into  a  real 
breach  when  Davis  found  it  expedient  to  find  a  new  Secre- 
tary of  War,  as  he  was  not  satisfied  with  Randolph.  He 
considered  James  A.  Seddon,  Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  Gus- 
tavus  W.  Smith.    Wigfall  came  to  him  to  offer  advice  on  the 


188         ,  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

appointment,  not  knowing  that  it  had  already  been  offered 
to  Seddon.  Davis  heard  Wigfall  at  length  without  informing 
him  that  the  place  had  been  filled.  The  next  day  the  Texan 
saw  in  the  paper  that  Seddon  had  accepted  the  portfolio  and 
he  was  so  enraged  that  he  immediately  became  an  enemy 
of  Davis  and  lost  no  opportunity  to  attack  him  in  the 
Senate  for  the  rest  of  the  war.1  He  was  a  friend  lost  by 
pure  inadvertence  and  perversity. 

Walker  had  been  a  political  appointment,  Randolph  an 
experiment.  Seddon  became  Secretary  of  War  after  a  some- 
what long  and  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  President.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  think,  as  men  have  thought,  that  Davis  de- 
sired a  mere  clerk  in  his  war  minister,  an  agent  to  carry  out 
orders,  and  that  he  was  inaccessible  to  advice.  The  truth  is 
that  he  constantly  felt  the  need  of  advice  and  sought  it,  and 
that  a  person  who  had  won  his  confidence  had  too  much 
influence  with  him  rather  than  too  little.  He  sometimes 
allowed  his  judgment  to  be  clouded  by  the  representations 
of  a  favorite.  When  Lee  became  an  army  commander,  he 
was  lost  to  Davis  as  a  resident  military  adviser.  The  Presi- 
dent now  looked  for  a  substitute  for  him  in  the  Secretary  of 
War,  and  it  was  for  this  reason  that  he  weighed  the  appoint- 
ment with  unusual  care. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Jefferson  Davis  felt  acutely  the  need 
of  a  trusted  adviser  at  the  end  of  1862.  To  imagine  that 
Benjamin  carried  most  weight  with  him  at  this  time,  and 
later  in  the  war,  is  a  common  error.  Benjamin,  indeed, 
was  his  chief  councilor  on  all  matters  from  the  autumn  of 
1 86 1  to  the  late  winter  of  1862.  When  Lee,  however,  be- 
came military  adviser,  he  supplanted  Benjamin  in  the  most 
important  field,  that  of  the  conduct  of  the  war.    Not  that 

1  Reagan,  161. 


A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY  189 

Davis  ceased  to  repose  trust  in  Benjamin.  Benjamin  con- 
tinued to  be  his  adviser  on  politics  and  foreign  affairs,  but 
his  opinion  was  not  often  asked  on  military  matters. 

Lee  was  in  intimate  association  with  the  President  from 
the  early  spring  of  1862  until  August,  when  he  went  afield. 
Then,  for  some  little  time,  Davis  was  rather  at  a  loss  for 
advice.  Randolph  did  not  please  him.  On  the  latter 's  resig- 
nation, James  A.  Seddon  occupied  the  vacant  place.  This 
choice  has  been  much  criticized,  especially  since  Seddon  was 
chosen  in  preference  to  Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  Gustavus 
W.  Smith.  Seddon  was,  in  reality,  an  excellent  selection. 
He  was  not  a  soldier  but  a  politician  and  a  man  of  the  world, 
and  he  got  along  with  Davis  better  than  Johnston  or  Smith 
could  possibly  have  done.  He  was  a  far  abler  man  than  is 
generally  supposed,  and  he  held  Davis's  confidence  until 
he  was  forced  out  of  office  by  congressional  opposition  early 
in  1865. 

Seddon  had  great  influence  with  the  President  from  the 
end  of  1862  until  the  summer  of  1863.  Then  he  was  some- 
what eclipsed,  and  for  some  time  Davis  was  again  at  a  loss. 
At  the  beginning  of  1864,  Braxton  Bragg  became  his  con- 
fidential adviser  and  held  the  post  for  the  greater  part  of  a 
year.  He  was  the  last  man  who  influenced  Davis's  policy 
and  he  influenced  it  to  a  greater  degree  than  any  of  his 
predecessors.  These  four,  then,  Benjamin,  Lee,  Seddon  and 
Bragg,  were  the  intimates  whom  Jefferson  Davis  trusted  and 
who  had  a  share  in  forming  his  decisions. 

James  A.  Seddon  was  a  lawyer  by  trade,  but  he  showed  a 
natural  talent  for  administration  and  marked  initiative.  His 
appointment  as  Secretary  of  War  is  evidence  that  Jefferson 
Davis  was  a  good  judge  of  men  when  his  affections  were  not 
involved.    It  was  always  difficult  for  him  to  sacrifice  a  friend 


190  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

on  the  altar  of  expediency,  though  he  could  do  this  when  it 
became  evident  to  him  that  the  sacrifice  was  imperative. 
Seddon's  selection  shows  the  influence  of  Virginia  on  Davis. 
On  coming  to  Richmond,  he  was  thrown  into  close  relations 
with  several  public  men,  R.  M.  T.  Hunter,  James  Lyons  and 
others.  But  in  James  A.  Seddon  he  found  just  what  he 
wanted — a  cultivated  companion  and  a  clear  thinker.  For 
a  time,  Seddon's  influence  was  so  great  that  he  had  much 
to  do  in  dictating  the  military  policy,  and  in  some  matters 
he  showed  such  sound  judgment  that  the  course  of  the  war 
might  have  been  affected  by  it  but  for  circumstances  over 
which  he  had  no  control. 

Seddon  was,  like  Davis,  a  valetudinarian.  He  had  served 
in  Congress  some  years  before  the  war,  but  at  the  time  of 
his  elevation  to  the  chief  post  in  the  Confederacy  next  to 
the  presidency  he  was  not  so  well  known  as  he  would  have 
been  but  for  his  invalid  temperament.  He  was  a  well- 
educated  man  of  exact  mental  processes,  a  typical  Virginia 
lawyer-planter-politician.  He  had  the  appearance  of  an  ex- 
treme neurotic,  "gaunt  and  emaciated,  with  long,  straggling 
hair.  He  looks  like  a  dead  man  galvanized  into  muscular 
animation.  His  eyes  are  sunken,  and  his  features  have  the 
hue  of  a  man  who  has  been  in  the  grave  a  full  month."  * 
In  spite  of  his  looks  and  health,  he  had  a  very  considerable 
degree  of  vigor  and,  like  his  fellow  invalid,  Davis,  lived  to 
old  age. 

In  the  lull  that  followed  Sharpsburg,  Seddon  took  hold  of 
the  War  Department.  By  this  time  the  war  had  reached 
such  a  pitch  that  winter  failed  to  put  a  stop  to  active  field 
operations.  Lee  was  busy  in  reorganizing  his  army,  which 
rose  to  70,000  men,  mostly  veterans  of  high  quality.    It  was 

1  Jones,  1,  312. 


A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY  191 

the  best  army  that  Lee  commanded  and  somewhat  superior 
to  the  opposing  Army  of  the  Potomac. 

The  Lincoln  government,  in  its  anxiety  to  push  matters, 
now  made  its  worst  blunder,  a  blunder  so  full  of  peril  that 
Southern  success  might  have  been  the  price  of  it.  McClellan, 
the  unenterprising  but  wary  commander  of  the  Union  army 
in  the  East,  was  removed  before  a  competent  successor  had 
been  found.  He  had  shown  a  natural  hesitation  in  attacking 
Lee,  though  the  Northern  press  was  demanding  immediate 
battle.  Ambrose  E.  Burnside,  a  frank  experiment,  was  put 
in  his  place.  Once  more  the  gods  fought  on  the  Southern 
side.  It  was  a  risk  of  the  gravest  kind  to  pit  an  untried 
general  against  such  opponents  as  Lee  and  Jackson,  who 
welcomed  the  change  and  prepared  to  make  the  most  of  it. 

In  spite  of  the  winter  season,  Burnside  advanced  to  the 
Rappahannock  in  the  hope  of  being  able  to  cross  before  Lee 
could  concentrate  to  oppose  him.  His  was  the  old  plan  of 
attacking  Richmond  from  the  north.  Jackson  proposed  to 
let  him  cross  the  Rappahannock  and  to  fight  him  on  the 
North  Anna,  not  far  from  Richmond,  where  a  victory  might 
be  followed  up  to  good  advantage.  Lee  favored  this  plan. 
The  objection  to  fighting  at  Fredericksburg,  in  front  of 
which  Burnside  lay,  was  that  the  heights  on  the  north 
bank  of  the  river,  crowned  with  artillery,  made  a  counter- 
attack most  difficult.  The  Confederates  might  win  a 
defensive  battle  but  not  the  decisive  victory  they  needed. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  victory  on  the  North  Anna  might  be 
followed  by  the  destruction  of  the  Union  army.  The 
farther  the  incompetent  Burnside  advanced  from  his  base, 
the  greater  would  be  his  danger.  There  was  every  reason 
for  the  Southern  generals  to  lure  him  on. 

Davis,  however,  refused  his  assent  to  a  battle  on  the 


192  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

North  Anna.  It  is  supposed  that  he  did  so  mainly  for 
political  reasons,  that  he  feared  that  a  retirement  to  the 
neighborhood  of  Richmond  would  have  a  bad  effect  on  the 
opinion  of  the  world.  This  is  unlikely.  Jefferson  Davis's 
ideas  of  strategy  were  peculiar.  He  had  little  taste  for  the 
offensive,  but  he  was  always  willing  to  fight  on  his  own  first 
defensive  line.  He  seems  to  have  thought  that  retreat  was 
the  same  thing  as  defeat,  and  a  general  who  showed  a  pref- 
erence for  retreating  always  lost  his  confidence. 

So  this  great  opportunity  was  allowed  to  pass  unimproved 
for  eccentric  strategic  considerations.  Lee,  as  well  as  Davis, 
was  to  blame.  The  former's  weakness  was  a  lack  of  self- 
assertion.  Time  and  again  he  allowed  himself  to  be  over- 
borne by  Davis,  though  he  could  not  but  have  been  con- 
scious of  his  superior  ability.  It  is  perhaps  well  for  military 
commanders  to  have  respect  for  civil  rulers,  but,  as  in  Lee's 
case,  the  virtue  can  be  carried  too  far.  The  Southern  army 
took  position  at  Fredericksburg  instead  of  utilizing  its 
heaven-sent  opportunity  to  win  a  "crowning  mercy." 

The  Northern  columns,  crossing  the  river  on  pontoons, 
attempted  to  carry  the  formidable  Confederate  position  just 
south  of  the  town  and  were  easily  repulsed  with  slaughter. 
Army  and  generals  alike  lacked  confidence  in  Burnside,  and 
as  the  beaten  troops  fell  back  into  the  town  in  the  afternoon 
of  a  bitter  December  day  a  condition  akin  to  panic  set  in. 
Burnside,  ignorant  of  the  situation,  wished  to  attack  again 
next  day,  but  his  subordinates  practically  defied  him  and  by 
so  doing  saved  the  army.  Mutiny  has  its  virtues.  When 
Joseph  E.  Johnston,  then  in  the  West,  heard  of  the  battle, 
he  said,  "What  luck  some  people  have!  No  one  will  ever 
attack  me  in  such  a  position." 

The  Union  army  was  defeated  and  in  considerable  dan- 


A  SEASON  OF  VICTORY  193 

ger;  it  was  a  question  what  the  Confederates  would  make 
of  the  opportunity.  Jackson,  unsatisfied  with  a  negative 
defensive  victory,  proposed  to  Lee  to  strip  his  men  to  the 
waist  in  the  zero  cold,  in  order  to  distinguish  them  from 
the  blue  coats,  and  launch  them  at  night  in  a  bayonet  attack 
on  the  huddled  masses  of  Union  soldiery  in  the  town.  It 
would  have  been  a  butchery  without  parallel  in  American 
history.  Lee  refused,  for  his  large  humanity  shrank  from 
the  ultimate  horrors  of  war.  The  matter  well  illustrates  the 
difference  between  the  men:  Lee  fought  to  do  his  duty; 
Jackson  fought  to  win.  Burnside  was  allowed  to  retreat 
unmolested  to  the  north  bank  of  the  river,  supremely  fortu- 
nate to  have  escaped  from  the  trap  with  the  loss  of  only 
13,000  men.  Never  again  did  the  South  have  such  an  oppor- 
tunity to  gain  a  decisive  victory. 


IX 

DILEMMA 

INDECISIVE  success  in  the  East  was  counterbalanced 
by  disaster  in  the  West.  It  was  in  this  field  that  Seddon 
intervened.  He  induced  Davis  to  make  Joseph  E.  Johnston 
commander  of  the  department  of  Tennessee  and  Mississippi, 
the  most  important  in  the  country.  Davis  had  distrusted 
Johnston  since  the  spring  campaign  in  Virginia,  but  Seddon, 
like  a  majority  of  the  Southern  people,  had  great  faith  in  his 
ability.  No  general  was  ever  more  successful  in  inspiring 
confidence  than  Johnston.  Nominally,  he  was  to  be  the  com- 
mander of  the  department,  with  the  two  main  armies  of  the 
West  under  him;  but  Seddon's  idea  went  beyond  this.  He 
designed  Johnston  to  have  control  of  the  operations  on  the 
east  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  with  little  interference  from 
Richmond.  In  fact,  Seddon  groped  toward  the  solution  of 
the  Confederate  strategic  problem.  What  was  needed  in 
the  West  was  centralization  of  authority  under  a  com- 
mander of  practically  independent  powers. 

The  marvel  is  that  Seddon  actually  succeeded  in  impres- 
sing his  view  on  Davis,  who  was  jealous  of  his  prerogative 
as  commander  in  chief.  Davis  now  consented,  though  per- 
haps somewhat  reluctantly,  to  give  Johnston  a  free  hand. 
His  position  was  actually  more  powerful  than  Lee's.  Lee 
was  a  departmental  commander,  but  only  one  army  was 
under  him.     Johnston's  department  embraced  the  armies 

194 


DILEMMA  195 

of  Braxton  Bragg  in  Tennessee  and  of  Pemberton  in  Missis- 
sippi. A  second  opportunity  to  play  a  decisive  part  in  the 
war  thus  came  to  him. 

Johnston  began  by  inspecting  his  new  field,  without  taking 
command  of  either  army  in  person.  Already  there  was  much 
distrust  of  Bragg  and  Pemberton,  but  the  departmental  com- 
mander made  no  suggestions  for  changes.  He  left  the  two 
generals  to  follow  their  own  devices. 

Bragg  fought  a  murderous  battle  with  Rosecrans  at  Mur- 
freesboro,  or  Stone's  River,  on  the  last  day  of  the  year.  As 
in  all  of  Bragg's  battles,  the  Southern  troops  were  set  the 
task  of  storming  a  formidable  position  held  by  an  army  of 
equal  or  greater  strength.  By  sheer  valor,  the  Confederates 
at  Murfreesboro  drove  the  Unionists  from  their  cannon- 
ridged  heights,  but  they  failed  in  an  effort  two  days  later 
to  complete  the  victory;  and  in  the  end  they  retreated  from 
a  field  made  glorious  by  their  futile  prowess.  Though  they 
had  out- fought  their  opponents,  they  suffered  all  the  dis- 
advantages of  defeat. 

Bragg's  incompetence  as  a  commander  was  evident  in  this 
battle.  It  brought  to  a  head  the  intense  dissatisfaction  of 
the  army  with  him.  Bragg  was  of  that  type  of  general  which 
always  finds  a  good  excuse  for  failure  in  the  shortcomings 
of  some  subordinate.  He  declared  that  he  would  have 
won  a  great  victory  if  his  generals  had  obeyed  orders  and 
he  put  one  of  them  under  arrest  and  proposed  to  court- 
martial  him. 

Now,  Bragg  was  one  of  Davis's  closest  friends,  and  Davis 
went  all  lengths  in  his  friendship;  but  it  is  to  his  credit  that 
at  this  juncture  he  seriously  thought  of  removing  Bragg 
from  command.  The  latter  was  ordered  to  report  to  Rich- 
mond, and  Johnston  was  instructed  to  take  charge  of  the 


196  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Tennessee  army  in  his  absence.  So  far  did  Seddon's  in- 
fluence reach.  Indeed,  the  stage  was  set  for  Johnston  if  he 
had  been  a  man  capable  of  profiting  by  opportunity. 

Johnston  conferred  with  the  President  at  army  headquar- 
ters. Davis  was  driven  in  December,  1862,  to  make  his  first 
long  trip  of  the  war  on  account  of  the  threatening  situation 
in  the  West.  Vicksburg  and  middle  Tennessee  were  both 
threatened  by  Union  forces:  the  promising  summer  had 
given  place  to  a  menacing  winter,  and  the  outlook  for  the 
coming  spring  was  anything  but  cheering. 

Leaving  Richmond  early  in  December,  Davis  went  di- 
rectly to  Chattanooga  and  consulted  Johnston.  Doubtless 
Seddon  had  not  altogether  dispelled  his  doubts  of  Johnston 
and  he  wished  to  see  for  himself  just  how  matters  stood. 
He  also  visited  Bragg's  army  at  Murfreesboro  not  long  be- 
fore the  battle  and  went  on  to  Mississippi.  It  is  to  be  noted 
how  his  own  military  ambition  had  faded  since  the  summer 
before.  With  a  great  battle  pending,  he  was  satisfied  to  let 
his  generals  do  the  fighting.  He  now  contented  himself  with 
the  role  of  military  administrator,  and  at  that  he  allowed 
Seddon  a  considerable  measure  of  independence.  In  his  own 
state  the  President  received  a  warm  reception.  He  made  a 
notable  speech  at  Jackson  and  again  consulted  Johnston, 
though  without  result.  He  journeyed  in  company  with  John- 
ston to  Vicksburg,  which  was  threatened.  Starting  east- 
ward, he  lingered  a  few  days  in  Mobile  and  returned  to  Rich- 
mond early  in  the  new  year,  weary  and  ill.  His  old  enemy 
neuralgia,  aggravated,  no  doubt,  by  the  discomforts  of  travel, 
attacked  him  severely  and  he  was  confined  to  his  house  until 
late  in  February,  1863. 

Davis  made  no  move  on  his  return  from  the  West  but  he 
had  about  concluded  that  Bragg  must  go.    That  leader  had 


DILEMMA  197 

taken  the  extraordinary  step  of  convening  his  generals  as  a 
sort  of  court  on  himself  and  asking  for  their  opinions  as  to 
his  fitness  for  command.  The  subordinates  replied  that  he 
had  lost  the  confidence  of  his  officers. 

Such  a  display  of  weakness  should  have  been  followed 
by  Bragg's  immediate  removal.  A  general  who  will  debate 
with  his  lieutenants  the  subject  of  his  own  qualifications  for 
command  is  manifestly  unfit  for  command.  Davis  was  un- 
favorably impressed  by  Bragg's  trial  of  himself  and,  on 
January  22,  wrote  to  Johnston  asking  him  to  visit  the  army 
at  once  and  confer  with  Bragg  and  his  officers  in  order  to 
come  to  a  decision  as  to  what  the  best  interests  of  the  service 
required.  At  this  time,  Jefferson  Davis,  as  much  as  he  liked 
Bragg,  was  reconciled  to  his  removal  and  to  Johnston's  as- 
suming command  himself.  The  retention  of  Bragg  was  not 
the  political  question  it  afterward  became. 

Johnston  visited  the  army  and  consulted  the  generals.  He 
reported  to  Davis  that  he  had  talked  with  Bragg,  Polk  and 
Hardee,  the  corps  commanders,  and  with  Governor  Harris 
of  Tennessee,  as  well  as  with  some  others.  Polk  and  Hardee 
lacked  confidence  in  Bragg.  Cheatham,  a  division  com- 
mander, openly  announced  that  he  would  never  again  go  into 
battle  under  him.  Harris  thought  it  best  not  to  remove  him. 
Bragg  himself  declared  that  the  feeling  in  the  army 
against  him  was  passing  away.  Johnston  added  his  own 
conclusion  on  the  matter,  a  conclusion  that  had  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  deciding  the  fate  of  the  Confederacy.  He 
said  that  he  was  glad  that  Davis  retained  his  trust  in  Bragg, 
that  the  latter  had  shown  great  vigor  and  skill  in  his  opera- 
tions and  that  it  would  be  unfortunate  to  remove  him. 

Why  was  it  that  Johnston  took  a  view  diametrically  op- 
posed to  that  of  almost  the  entire  army?    If  Bragg's  opera- 


198  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

tions  had  been  conducted  with  vigor  and  skill,  it  is  extremely 
unlikely  that  all  of  his  generals  would  have  been  against 
him.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  any  one  could  denominate  the 
blundering  movements  that  preceded  the  battle  of  Murfrees- 
boro  as  indicating  vigor  and  skill.  Johnston  was  a  soldier 
of  great  parts.  Why  did  he  thus  work  to  keep  in  command 
an  incompetent  officer?  Davis  had  acted  fairly,  putting 
Bragg's  fate  squarely  in  the  hands  of  the  departmental  com- 
mander; and  Johnston  deliberately  gave  an  opinion  that  kept 
at  the  head  of  the  most  important  army  in  the  South  a 
mediocre  general  who  had  become  intensely  unpopular  with 
his  men. 

The  solution  lies  in  Johnston's  own  weakness.  He  was  the 
most  highly  educated  soldier  in  America  and  one  of  the 
ablest,  but  the  dread  of  responsibility  blasted  his  talents. 
His  is  a  very  singular  case.  Utterly  without  physical  fear, 
he  greatly  dreaded  the  burden  of  command.  He  was  still 
suffering  from  the  effect  of  his  wound  and  he  felt  that  if 
Bragg  were  superseded  he  must  take  the  latter 's  place.  He 
preferred  to  have  Bragg  command  the  army  rather  than 
command  it  himself.  This  explains  his  unfortunate  action. 
Jefferson  Davis  is  hardly  to  be  blamed  for  retaining  an  in- 
efficient officer  at  the  head  of  the  army  of  Tennessee  when 
the  departmental  commander  so  enthusiastically  endorsed 
him.    He  simply  accepted  Johnston's  decision. 

Seddon  was  bitterly  disappointed.  He  had  been  working 
to  secure  Bragg's  dismissal  and  Johnston's  definite  assign- 
ment to  the  army.  He  had  sought  to  strengthen  Johnston 
in  every  way  and  to  secure  for  him  complete  control  of  his 
department.  What  was  the  result?  Johnston  was  playing 
the  malcontent.  With  his  usual  tactlessness,  he  had  un- 
bosomed himself  to  Senator  Wigfall.    His  position,  he  said, 


DILEMMA  199 

was  anomalous  and  unsatisfactory.  The  two  armies  in  his 
department  were  too  far  apart  to  cooperate,  and  while  nomi- 
nally commanding  both  he  commanded  neither.  He  thus 
bore  the  blame  for  failure  without  receiving  the  credit  for 
success. 

There  was  some  truth  in  this  complaint:  the  President  had 
not  been  sufficiently  explicit  in  enumerating  Johnston's 
powers.  But  now  Seddon  informed  the  departmental  com- 
mander that  his  powers  were  very  large,  that  there  had  been 
no  thought  of  giving  him  a  nominal  command.  "I  feel  well 
assured,"  he  wrote  Johnston,  "that  it  was  very  far  from  the 
intention  of  the  President,  as  it  certainly  has  been  mine,  to 
regard  your  command  in  this  light."  He  went  on  to  say 
that  because  of  the  remoteness  of  the  Western  armies  and 
the  difficulty  of  directing  them  from  Richmond  it  was  the 
intention  of  the  government  to  give  the  departmental  com- 
mander much  the  same  authority  that  the  government  itself 
exerted  over  the  armies  nearer  the  capital.  It  was  expected 
that  Johnston  would  assume  the  command  in  person  of  the 
army  that  needed  him  most;  Seddon  was  disappointed  that 
he  had  not  gone  to  Vicksburg,  when  it  was  threatened.  He 
would  now  like  him  to  take  command  of  the  army  of  Ten- 
nessee, with  Bragg  as  second  in  command  or  without  Bragg 
if  that  suited  him  better.  The  Secretary  of  War  ended  with 
a  noble  expression  of  friendship:  "I  should  really  be  pleased 
to  learn  candidly  from  you  your  own  preferences,  for  while 
I  cannot  assure  their  fulfillment,  yet  from  my  appreciation 
and  confidence  in  you,  I  should  have  every  disposition  to 
promote  and  may  not  be  powerless  to  accomplish  them." 

All  in  vain.  Johnston  would  not  be  persuaded  that  he  had 
the  power  to  control  his  department:  he  insisted  that  he  was 
left  without  definite  directions  as  to  the  extent  of  his  author- 


200  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

ity.  The  government  certainly  sought  to  show  that  it  re- 
garded him  as  supreme  within  the  limits  of  his  department, 
but  Johnston  would  not  have  it  so  because  he  did  not  wish 
it  so.  He  did  not  wish  to  assume  the  tremendous  respon- 
sibility of  conducting  the  Confederate  operations  in  the 
main  theater  of  war  with  inadequate  means;  and  on  one 
score  he  had  a  most  legitimate  subject  of  complaint.  The 
departmental  system  was  demonstrating  its  hopeless  inade- 
quacy; Johnston  was  asked  to  defend  the  Mississippi  River 
while  having  control  only  of  one  side  of  the  stream.  The 
troops  on  the  west  bank  might  as  well  have  been  in  Vir- 
ginia for  all  the  good  they  did  to  the  threatened  fortress 
of  Vicksburg  on  the  east  bank,  though  it  would  have  been 
far  easier  to  concentrate  the  forces  on  both  sides  of  the 
river  than  to  draw  from  the  distant  army  of  Tennessee. 
Johnston's  expostulations  over  this  matter  were  certainly 
justified.  Yet  if  he  had  gone  vigorously  to  work  with  the 
means  at  his  command,  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  gov- 
ernment would  have  granted  him  an  extension  of  his  powers 
or  ordered  the  generals  in  the  trans-Mississippi  to  support 
him.    He  did  little  but  complain. 

A  second  time,  on  March  3,  Seddon  asked  Johnston  to 
express  his  wishes  as  to  his  department.  "You  think  the 
armies  in  the  West  [Mississippi  and  Tennessee]  too  remote 
and  distinct  to  be  united,  and,  yet,  if  I  divine  aright,  your 
feeling — your  generosity — will  not  allow  you  to  assume  com- 
mand of  either  to  the  temporary  displacement  of  either  of 
the  generals  commanding  there."  Such  an  attitude,  Seddon 
urged,  left  Johnston  no  place  commensurate  with  his  repu- 
tation and  ability.  He  therefore  frankly  requested  the  gen- 
eral to  take  command  of  the  army  of  Tennessee,  with  Bragg 
as  his  second,  assuring  him  that  both  the  President  and  the 


DILEMMA  201 

country  desired  it.  "If  General  Bragg,"  he  went  on,  "as 
frankly  I  would  prefer,  were  recalled  altogether,  your  em- 
barrassment in  assuming  his  place  would  be  greater  than 
in  merely  assuming  what  all  acknowledge  so  cheerfully  to 
be  your  due,  the  supreme  command."  Yet  a  third  time  Sed- 
don pleaded  with  Johnston  to  put  himself  at  the  head  of 
the  Tennessee  army,  declaring  that  the  public  dissatisfac- 
tion with  Bragg  was  great  and  that  the  army  could  not 
be  relied  on  to  do  its  full  duty  under  so  unpopular  a 
commander. 

Seddon  had  brought  Davis  to  the  point  of  sacrificing 
Bragg,  but  Johnston  refused  to  do  his  part.  On  February 
12,  he  had  again  written  to  the  President  in  commendation 
of  Bragg.  He  stated  that  though  Polk  had  lost  all  faith  in 
Bragg  the  troops  were  still  confident  of  beating  the  enemy. 
"While  this  feeling  exists,"  he  wrote,  "and  you  regard 
General  Bragg  as  brave  and  skillful,  the  fact  that  some  or 
all  of  the  general  officers  of  the  army,  and  many  of  the  sub- 
ordinates, think  that  you  might  give  them  a  commander  with 
fewer  defects  cannot,  I  think,  greatly  diminish  his  value." 
Johnston  repeated  that  the  operations  of  the  army  had  been 
well  conducted.  He  added  that  Polk  and  Hardee  had  told 
him  that  they  had  advised  the  President  to  remove  Bragg 
and  put  him  in  command,  but  that  such  a  result  was  incon- 
sistent with  his  personal  honor.  The  interests  of  the  service, 
he  concluded,  required  that  Bragg  be  not  relieved. 

Polk  and  Hardee  had  done  their  duty,  risking  Davis's 
displeasure,  for  they  felt  that  it  was  imperative  to  get  rid 
of  their  incompetent  chief.  Seddon  had  worked  success- 
fully toward  the  same  end:  the  President  was  reconciled  to 
Bragg's  going.  But  Johnston  balked  them,  advising  the 
retention  of  an  officer  he  damned  with  faint  praise.    Davis 


202  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

wrote  to  Johnston  in  reply  that  he  regretted  that  Bragg's 
officers  had  lost  confidence  in  him.  "It  is  scarcely  possible, 
in  that  state  of  the  case,  for  him  to  possess  the  requisite  con- 
fidence of  the  troops."  Thus  Davis  refuted  Johnston's 
singular  statement  that  the  officers  were  disheartened  and 
the  men  confident.  He  expressed  gratification,  however,  at 
Johnston's  belief  in  Bragg.  "It  is  not  given  to  all  men  of 
ability  to  excite  enthusiasm  and  win  the  affection  of  their 
troops."  The  question  of  finding  a  successor  to  Bragg  was 
difficult,  because  Johnston  did  not  think  that  any  of  Bragg's 
subordinates  should  have  the  place  and  yet  would  not  take 
it  himself.  Davis  declared  that  he  could  not  see  how  John- 
ston's assumption  of  command  would  involve  his  honor. 

Davis,  indeed,  was  sorely  puzzled.  Much  as  he  liked 
Bragg,  he  thought  that  Bragg  must  go  and  wished  Johnston 
to  succeed  him.  If  not  Johnston,  some  one  else.  But  John- 
ston made  Bragg's  displacement  almost  impossible,  for  he 
was  exhausting  all  of  his  resources  to  find  excuses  for 
declining  the  command  of  the  army  of  Tennessee  and  to 
keep  Polk  or  Hardee  from  being  appointed.  Beauregard  had 
been  tried  and  found  wanting.  Van  Dorn  or  Hindman 
would  not  do.  Jefferson  Davis  cannot  be  well  blamed,  under 
the  circumstances,  for  retaining  Bragg,  unsatisfactory  as  he 
was.  There  was  probably  no  officer  competent  for  the  com- 
mand except  Jackson,  who,  as  we  remarked  before,  by  the 
strangest  of  oversights,  was  entirely  unconsidered. 

It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however,  that  Jefferson  Davis  made 
still  another  effort  to  determine  Bragg's  fitness  for  command 
and  the  exact  sentiment  of  the  army  in  regard  to  him.  Late 
in  March  he  sent  Colonel  William  Preston  Johnston,  an 
officer  of  good  judgment,  to  visit  the  West  and  report  on 
the  situation.     Colonel  Johnston  carefully  inspected  the 


DILEMMA  203 

army  of  Tennessee.  He  talked  frankly  with  the  higher 
officers.  Leonidas  Polk,  the  junior  corps  commander,  told 
him  plainly  that  Bragg  would  have  to  go,  that  he  should  be 
transferred  to  another  field.  Polk  suggested  that  Bragg's 
appointment  as  adjutant-general  somewhere  else  would  leave 
the  way  open  for  putting  Johnston  at  the  head  of  the 
army.  Colonel  Johnston  also  conferred  with  General  John- 
ston. The  latter  declared  that  the  condition  of  the  army 
was  excellent  and  that  it  lacked  "no  physical  element  of 
success."  He  said  nothing  of  the  moral  element  of  con- 
fidence in  its  commander.  Johnston  stated  that  great  credit 
was  due  Bragg  and  Pillow  for  building  it  up:  Pillow,  the 
chief  conscript  officer,  had  sent  10,000  men  to  it. 

Colonel  Johnston's  report  on  the  army  of  Tennessee  is 
interesting.  He  stated  that  there  was  a  great  want  of  bayo- 
nets and  that  the  cartridges  were  too  large  for  the  Enfield 
rifles  used  by  the  infantry.  Transportation  was  tolerably 
good.  The  troops  were  well  supplied  with  clothing  but 
lacked  shoes.  Subsistence  was  difficult  to  obtain.  The  posi- 
tion of  the  army  at  Tullahoma  was  not  good  and  was 
defended  only  by  slight  entrenchments,  as  Bragg  believed 
that  heavy  earthworks  demoralized  troops.  This  is  im- 
portant as  revealing  Bragg  as  a  thoroughly  old-fashioned 
soldier,  dead  to  the  developments  of  modern  war.  The  old- 
fashioned  soldier  abhorred  fieldworks  and  wanted  troops  to 
stand  in  close  order  and  be  shot  down  en  masse.  Such 
archaic  ideas  were  superseded  by  the  new  methods  of  the 
very  next  year,  when  trench  warfare  became  firmly  fixed  in 
military  science. 

This  report  might  have  disposed  of  Bragg  but  for 
Johnston's  continued  defense  of  him.  As  late  as  April  10, 
1863,  he  declared  that  he  was  unfit  for  field  duty  and  that 


204  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Bragg  was  consequently  still  needed.  This  seems  to  have 
ended  Davis's  efforts  to  find  a  successor  for  the  command 
of  the  army  of  Tennessee.  Its  fate  was  to  rest  in  the  hands 
of  Braxton  Bragg,  though  there  was  a  bitter  feud  between 
the  commander  and  his  subordinate  generals  and  a  most 
intense  dislike  for  him  on  the  part  of  the  rank  and  file.  But 
Johnston  simply  would  not  accept  the  baton,  and  Bragg 
stayed  on  largely  because  there  seemed  to  be  no  one  else  to 
put  in  his  place. 

If  Johnston  was  unwilling  to  displace  Bragg,  who  had 
served  for  some  time  in  important  capacities,  he  need  not 
have  felt  any  such  delicacy  in  the  case  of  John  C.  Pember- 
ton, in  command  of  the  army  of  Mississippi.  This  force  was 
of  almost  greater  importance  than  the  army  of  Tennessee, 
for  it  guarded  Vicksburg  and  the  Mississippi  Valley.  Davis 
has  been  much  blamed  for  his  appointment  of  Pemberton, 
but  the  officers  in  the  service  capable  of  independent  com- 
mand were  few  and  it  was  impossible  to  avoid  some  experi- 
menting. Pemberton  was  a  man  of  mediocre  intellect  and 
feeble  character,  though  he  seems  to  have  been  a  good  talker 
and  he  undoubtedly  impressed  the  President  as  a  soldier  of 
talent.  Already,  early  in  1863,  his  army  and  the  people 
of  Mississippi  had  begun  to  lose  faith  in  him.  He  was  en- 
tirely incompetent  for  so  difficult  a  duty  as  was  assigned 
him — enough  to  have  taxed  any  one — and  Johnston  might 
well  have  considered  relieving  him  himself  or  recommending 
a  successor.  Both  Polk  and  Hardee  were  better  officers; 
indeed,  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  find  a  division  or  corps 
general  of  less  capacity  than  Pemberton.  Yet  in  March 
Johnston  wrote  to  Pemberton  complimenting  him  on  the 
vigor  he  had  shown  in  his  defense  of  the  Mississippi  against 
Grant.    Surely,  if  Davis  continued  Pemberton  in  command 


DILEMMA  205 

as  well  as  Bragg,  it  was  not  greatly  his  fault,  since  the  de- 
partmental commander  supported  both  of  these  inefficient 
soldiers. 

Davis  and  Seddon  had  expected  Johnston  to  use  the  in- 
terior lines  of  communication  and  concentrate  troops  in  Ten- 
nessee or  Mississippi  as  the  need  arose.  In  this  way  they 
hoped  that  the  superior  forces  of  the  Union  might  be  equal- 
ized at  the  point  of  vital  contact.  But  Johnston  declared 
that  communication  between  Tennessee  and  Mississippi  was 
too  slow  to  allow  of  much  shifting  of  troops,  though  a  railroad 
running  parallel  with  the  Mississippi  River  would  seem  to 
have  offered  facilities  for  just  such  strategy. 

Johnston  was  in  doubt  as  to  Grant's  intentions.  From 
time  to  time  reports  came  that  the  Union  general  was  send- 
ing large  reinforcements  to  Rosecrans  in  Tennessee,  where 
the  main  attack  might  be  made.  Pemberton,  however,  sent 
word  that  Grant  was  stronger  than  ever  and  that  Vicksburg 
appeared  to  be  his  objective.  Still  Johnston  feared  that 
Bragg's  army  was  in  danger  and  appealed  to  Davis  to  reen- 
force  it.  The  President  sought  to  draw  troops  from  Beaure- 
gard in  Charleston,  but  Beauregard  sent  only  a  small  force. 

The  Union,  by  having  the  initiative,  enjoyed  an  advantage 
over  the  Confederates.  By  threatening  Tennessee,  Arkan- 
sas and  Louisiana  simultaneously,  the  Union  strategists  were 
able  to  secure  that  dispersal  of  the  Southern  forces  needed 
to  bring  about  Grant's  success  at  Vicksburg.  There  were 
sufficient  bodies  of  Confederate  troops  within  concentrating 
range  of  Vicksburg  to  have  overwhelmed  Grant  if  they  had 
been  brought  together.  The  government,  however,  by  mak- 
ing the  Mississippi  River  the  boundary  between  departments 
had  erected  a  barrier  between  its  own  forces.  It  had  failed 
to  send  troops  to  the  trans-Mississippi  when  they  were 


206  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

needed  there  and  might  have  been  spared,  and  now  the  trans- 
Mississippi  troops  did  not  wish  to  cross  the  river  to  assist 
in  the  defense  of  Mississippi.  Johnston  had  no  power  over 
the  troops  on  the  west  side  of  the  river,  though  they  were 
but  a  short  distance  from  Vicksburg ;  he  was  obliged  to  draw 
support  for  Pemberton's  army  from  Bragg,  hundreds  of  miles 
away. 

As  for  Davis,  he  would  not  interfere  with  the  trans-Mis- 
sissippi, in  spite  of  Vicksburg's  danger.  He  feared  raids 
into  Confederate  territory  from  Memphis  and  New  Orleans, 
and  besides  the  defensive  dispersal  was  his  natural  strategy. 
He  hated  exposing  territory  by  making  concentrations.  He, 
therefore,  did  not  give  Johnston  the  troops  he  so  sorely 
needed.  They  remained  in  Arkansas  and  Louisiana  to  op- 
pose the  Union  feints. 

Johnston,  also,  was  at  fault.  By  April,  1863,  Pember- 
ton's army  had  become  the  more  important  of  the  two  forces 
in  his  department,  and  he  should  have  gone  to  Vicksburg 
and  taken  command.  He  was  badly  needed.  But  he  would 
not  go,  and  his  reluctance  to  undertake  field  service  was  again 
alienating  Davis.  Seddon  still  supported  him  with  all  his 
power,  but  Seddon  was  beginning  to  lose  favor  as  it  became 
more  and  more  evident  that  Johnston  was  not  the  man  to 
be  at  the  head  of  the  department  of  Tennessee  and  Missis- 
sippi. Seddon's  partial  loss  of  influence  was  destined  to 
play  no  inconsiderable  part  in  the  occurrences  of  the  eventful 
summer  of  1863. 

As  April  opened  the  stage  was  set  for  the  tragedy  that 
brought  about  the  downfall  of  the  Confederacy.  Up  to  this 
time,  the  fortune  of  war  had,  on  the  whole,  been  favorable 
to  the  South.  The  Unionists  had  not  only  failed  to  con- 
quer Virginia  but  they  had  seen  Washington  threatened. 


DILEMMA  207 

That  Lee  could  hold  out  indefinitely  was  almost  certain. 
At  any  moment  he  might  become  an  active  menace  to  the 
North.  The  Confederates  had  lost  most  of  Tennessee,  but 
still  had  a  foothold  in  the  center  of  the  state.  Missouri  had 
been  abandoned  to  the  Union,  but  Arkansas  was  not  yet 
gone  and  Louisiana  was  held  by  large  forces. 

Vicksburg  was  the  weakest  point  in  the  Confederate 
chain,  because  the  Union  could  bring  to  bear  naval  strength 
as  well  as  military  against  it,  and  the  most  notable  Union 
successes  had  been  won  by  a  combination  of  army  and  navy. 
The  Confederate  forces  at  Vicksburg  were  too  small  and 
were  commanded  by  one  of  the  least  efficient  officers  in  the 
service.  Grant's  army,  on  the  other  hand,  was  large  and 
ably  commanded.  If  the  unenterprising  defensive  continued 
to  be  the  Confederate  policy  in  the  West — if  no  vigorous 
measures  of  concentration  were  taken — the  chances  were 
that  the  Union  would  succeed  in  its  main  strategic  aim  of 
securing  the  Mississippi  River  from  its  source  to  its  mouth. 
It  was  on  this  that  the  success  or  failure  of  the  war  turned. 
The  control  of  the  Mississippi  meant  more  than  the  sever- 
ance of  the  Confederacy  into  two  unconnected  fragments: 
that  severance  had  already  been  partly  effected  by  the  policy 
of  the  Confederate  government.  The  Mississippi  was  the 
great  road  of  the  West;  it  was  the  pride  of  the  West,  the 
symbol  of  greatness.  If  the  South  could  hold  the  mighty 
river,  the  Union  would  be  foiled  everywhere:  it  must  give 
up  the  contest.  If  the  Union  could  take  the  river  from  the 
South,  it  could,  sooner  or  later,  complete  the  conquest  of 
the  seceded  states.  People  sensed,  if  they  did  not  put  in 
words,  the  supreme  importance  of  the  Mississippi  in  the 
struggle. 

The  weakness  of  the  Confederacy  in  the  West  was  in  its 


208  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

leadership.  It  was  successful  in  the  East  because  of  two 
great  men,  Lee  and  Jackson.  In  the  West,  with  its  armies 
commanded  by  Bragg,  Pemberton,  Hindman,  Kirby  Smith, 
it  was  on  the  down  grade.  Yet  it  had  splendid  troops  in 
the  West  as  well  as  in  Virginia.  The  victories  of  the  Con- 
federates in  the  East  and  their  defeats  in  the  West  have  led 
some  people  to  conclude  that  the  Eastern  army  was  better 
than  the  Western.  This  is  not  the  case.  If  anything,  the 
Western  troops  of  the  Confederacy  were  better  than  the 
Eastern.  The  reports  tell  us  of  the  magnificent  appearance 
of  many  of  the  Western  regiments,  composed  almost  entirely 
of  tall  and  stalwart  men.  They  were  Nordics  of  the  finest 
type,  pioneers,  soldiers,  country  builders.  They  showed  their 
valor  on  many  fields  and  if  they  had  been  led  by  great  gen- 
erals they  would,  in  all  probability,  have  won  victories  that 
would  have  eclipsed  the  Second  Manassas  and  Chancellors- 
ville.  Ill  led,  they  almost  always  gave  the  Union  armies 
great  trouble  to  defeat  them.  Sometimes,  as  at  Chicka- 
mauga,  they  won  battles  in  spite  of  the  bad  generalship  from 
which  they  suffered  continually  from  Shiloh  to  Johnston's 
accession  to  command  in  1864. 

Leadership  was  imperatively  demanded  in  the  West  by 
the  beginning  of  May,  1863.  Reen  for  cements  from  the  East 
were  also  needed,  if  the  trans-Mississippi  was  not  to  be 
drawn  on.  Johnston  was  a  very  able  strategist  but  not  a 
great  administrator:  as  a  departmental  commander  he  was 
wasted.  Nobody  was  in  his  right  place  in  the  West.  John- 
ston should  have  been  at  the  head  of  Pemberton's  army, 
Pemberton  in  command  of  a  division.  Bragg  would  have 
been  a  better  departmental  commander  than  a  general. 
Above  all,  a  commander  in  chief  was  needed  for  all  the 
armies,  to  bring  about  a  coordination  of  effort.    As  it  was, 


DILEMMA  209 

the  Confederacy  was  divided  into  a  number  of  fields,  all  in- 
dependent of  the  others  and  all  very  imperfectly  directed 
from  Richmond.  There  was  Lee  in  Virginia,  wholly  dis- 
tinct from  the  rest  of  the  military  forces.  There  were  the 
armies  of  Tennessee  and  Mississippi,  which  worked  together 
to  some  extent.  Beauregard  went  his  own  way  as  com- 
mander at  Charleston.  Mobile  was  another  center.  Across 
the  Mississippi  were  the  forces  of  Arkansas,  Louisiana  and 
Texas,  all  practically  independent  of  each  other.  The  gov- 
ernment had  no  accurate  information  as  to  the  number  of 
troops  in  the  field  and  their  equipment  and  temper.  It 
largely  groped  in  the  dark.  This  condition  of  affairs  was 
not  precisely  the  fault  of  Jefferson  Davis.  It  was  mainly  due 
to  the  lack  of  a  general  staff  or  of  a  commander  in  chief 
given  full  power  to  order  the  armies  as  he  saw  fit.  And 
largely  because  there  was  no  central  military  authority,  be- 
cause Jefferson  Davis  in  Richmond  could  not  perform  the 
double  functions  of  head  of  the  nation  and  director  of  the 
armies,  the  Confederacy  fell. 


X 

THE  GREAT  CRISIS 

IN  the  spring  of  1863  the  prospects  of  the  Confederacy 
were  still  good,  though  not  so  good  as  in  the  autumn 
before.  The  country  had  suffered  from  a  winter  of  dis- 
content, caused  by  the  valuelessness  of  cotton  that  could  not 
be  exported  and  by  the  dearth  of  food  in  some  places.  Not 
that  there  was  an  actual  scarcity  in  the  country,  but  a  sit- 
uation somewhat  suggestive  of  that  of  Russia  in  191 7.  There 
was  grain  enough  in  Georgia  and  other  food-raising  districts 
to  support  the  army  and  the  civilian  population,  but  there 
was  a  want  of  transportation  and  a  general  disinclination  to 
sell  supplies  for  Confederate  money,  now  rapidly  depreciat- 
ing. This  disinclination  to  take  Confederate  currency  con- 
tinued and  had  much  to  do  with  the  lack  of  foodstuffs  in 
the  market.  Besides,  the  government  had  begun  to  impress 
provisions  at  purely  nominal  prices  and  to  lay  taxes  on 
farm  products,  a  policy  that  irritated  the  farmers  and  re- 
stricted production.  Added  to  this  was  a  want  of  organiz- 
ing ability,  due  in  part  to  the  scarcity  of  real  business  men 
in  the  country  and  in  part  to  the  failure  of  the  government 
to  employ  such  as  there  were  for  economic  organization. 
The  government  of  Jefferson  Davis  was  traditional  and  un- 
original: it  followed  the  old  administrative  routine  and  ven- 
tured into  few  of  the  activities  that  modern  governments 
enter  in  war  time. 

210 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  211 

It  is  not  certain  that  the  government  could  have  di- 
rected the  resources  of  the  South,  even  if  it  had  tried.  In 
191 7-1 8,  Woodrow  Wilson  was  able  to  wield  despotic  power 
over  the  whole  energies  of  the  American  nation,  but  the 
Southerners  of  1863  were  not  the  tame  Americans  of  our 
day,  accustomed  to  the  exercise  of  authority.  They  were 
individualists  who  opposed  extensions  of  governmental  juris- 
diction even  in  the  throes  of  a  struggle  for  independence. 
Thus  when  the  government  attempted  to  make  the  people 
give  up  cotton  and  tobacco  culture,  in  order  to  raise  food, 
it  met  with  little  success.  Toombs  flew  into  a  royal  rage 
at  such  an  invasion  of  his  rights  and  continued  to  plant 
a  full  crop  of  cotton.  Other  planters  followed  his  bad 
example. 

It  is  possible,  nevertheless,  that  Jefferson  Davis  might 
have  exerted  a  large  influence  over  the  economic  life  of  the 
country  if  he  had  gone  to  the  people  themselves.  But  he 
was  under  the  sway  of  the  traditional  idea  of  the  presidency 
— that  military  direction  was  his  overshadowing  duty.  He 
failed  to  understand,  as  was  quite  natural  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, that  the  true  course  for  a  ruler  to  pursue  in  a 
national  crisis  is  to  make  himself  the  national  leader.  The 
head  of  a  nation  can  afford  to  leave  details  to  others,  for 
to  care  for  details  is  much  easier  than  to  impart  confidence 
to  a  public  drooping  under  the  trials  of  war.  The  Southern 
people  were  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  personal  touch: 
they  could  be  aroused  to  any  pitch  of  sacrifice,  but  they 
needed  to  hear  a  voice  and  to  see  a  leader  in  their  midst. 
Jefferson  Davis,  intensely  busy  with  his  war-office  duties, 
showed  himself  to  the  people  but  little.  The  lower  South 
was  largely  left  to  shift  for  itself,  for  the  President  seldom 
felt  at  leisure  to  stir  from  Richmond.    He  spent  himself  un- 


212  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

grudgingly  in  the  performance  of  technical  duties,  giving  too 
little  care  altogether  to  the  matter  of  inspiring  the  country. 

What  the  South  needed,  and  never  found,  was  a  national 
leader.  It  needed  a  combination  of  demagogue  and  prac- 
tical executive  such  as  perhaps  Robert  Toombs  came  nearest 
to  being,  or  else  a  great  soldier:  instead,  it  had  a  dignified 
senator  who  busied  himself  in  the  details  of  his  work  and 
was  seen  little  in  public.  There  is  nothing  surprising,  then, 
in  the  fact  that  Davis's  popularity  steadily  waned  through 
1862  and  was  at  a  low  ebb  in  1863.  The  masses  were  intelli- 
gent enough  to  realize  that  the  government  had  been  caught 
unprepared  in  the  early  spring  of  1862  and  that  the  country 
had  been  rescued  by  the  generals;  what  they  failed  to  see 
was  that  Jefferson  Davis's  quick  and  resolute  action  on  the 
draft  and  his  appointment  of  Lee  to  command  had  made 
victory  possible.  Naturally,  the  feats  of  Lee  and  Jackson 
attracted  attention  while  the  quieter  work  of  the  President 
was  overlooked. 

At  the  same  time  that  Grant  was  preparing  to  lay  siege  to 
Vicksburg,  the  North  was  resuming  operations  in  Virginia. 
Joseph  Hooker  replaced  the  unhappy  Burnside  in  command 
of  the  army  of  the  Potomac,  which  in  April,  1863,  numbered 
110,000  men.  It  was  Hooker's  part  to  defeat  Lee  and  cap- 
ture Richmond  while  Grant  took  Vicksburg. 

Lee  had  only  50,000  men  with  which  to  oppose  Hooker, 
for  Longstreet  was  absent  with  a  part  of  his  corps.  Hooker 
aimed  to  hold  Lee  at  Fredericksburg  with  half  of  his  army 
while  the  other  half  crossed  the  Rappahannock  River  above 
the  town  and  encircled  the  Confederates.  It  was  the  pincer 
strategy,  made  famous  by  the  German  generals  in  the  World 
War. 

Lee,  whose  ability  to  devine  an  opponent's  plans  has 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  213 

seldom  been  surpassed,  read  Hooker's  design  and  frustrated 
it.  Taking  the  counter-offensive  with  great  energy,  he  sent 
Jackson  on  a  wide  flanking  march  around  the  Union  right 
wing  on  May  2.  Jackson  effected  an  utter  surprise  and 
rolled  up  the  right  of  the  Northern  host  with  complete  suc- 
cess, but  he  was  mortally  wounded  in  the  hour  of  victory. 
Lee  finished  the  work  most  brilliantly  on  the  two  succeeding 
days,  and  Hooker  was  glad  to  withdraw  his  beaten  army 
across  the  Rappahannock.  The  Northern  spring  offensive 
thus  broke  down  immediately  and  disastrously. 

The  price  of  the  triumph  was  the  life  of  a  genius.  Com- 
parisons between  such  soldiers  as  Lee  and  Jackson  are  in- 
vidious, but  it  may  safely  be  said  that  Jackson  was  one  of 
the  foremost  strategists  of  modern  history.  Still  a  young 
man,  he  was  improving  every  day  and  he  must  soon  have 
come  to  the  command  of  an  army  and  the  opportunity  for 
the  full  exercise  of  his  great  talents. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  never  fully  understood  the  taciturn 
and  somewhat  eccentric  officer,  who  had  once  actually  threat- 
ened to  resign  when  overruled  by  the  War  Department.  As 
Jackson  was  dying,  however,  the  President  suddenly  became 
appreciative  and  sat  "unable  to  think  of  anything  but  the  im- 
pending calamity  until  twelve  or  one  o'clock."  1  And  when 
the  thunderbolt  of  war  lay  in  state  in  Richmond,  Davis 
dropped  a  tear  on  his  face  and  stood  looking  at  him  for  a 
time,  almost  overcome.  He  was  beginning  to  realize  the 
greatness  of  his  loss. 

Chancellor sville,  though  saddened  by  the  fall  of  Jackson, 
was  of  great  importance  to  the  Confederates  in  that  it  gave 
them  the  initiative  at  the  moment  of  supreme  crisis.  The 
war  had  continued  for  two  years:  it  could  not  go  on  forever, 

1 A  Memoir,  2,  382. 


214  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

and  it  was  evident  to  thinking  men  that  it  had  reached  its 
height  and  that  the  events  of  the  summer  would  probably  be 
determinative.  The  Union  army,  defeated  at  Chancellor s- 
ville,  was  in  no  condition  to  assume  the  offensive.  The  tri- 
umphant Southern  army  was  ready  for  aggressive  action. 
This  was  the  situation  on  the  right  of  the  long  battle  line 
that  reached  from  the  ocean  to  Indian  Territory.  In  the 
center,  at  Chattanooga,  Bragg  confronted  Rosecrans:  the 
armies  were  evenly  enough  balanced  to  neutralize  each  other. 
In  Mississippi  Grant  was  moving  against  Pemberton,  who 
covered  Vicksburg  with  his  field  army.  West  of  the  river, 
the  Unionists  were  making  a  great  demonstration  against 
Louisiana.  What  would  the  Southern  generals  do  since 
Chancellorsville  gave  them  the  chance  to  make  some  bold 
move? 

At  the  beginning  of  May,  Grant  was  closing  in  on  Pember- 
ton. Davis  made  an  effort  to  reenforce  him,  but  on  May  6 
Pemberton  telegraphed  that  only  5,000  troops  had  come  from 
Alabama,  the  main  point  depended  on.  A  few  thousand  men 
had  been  drawn  from  Bragg,  and  thus  Pember ton's  army 
had  been  somewhat  enlarged  though  it  was  still  insufficient. 
Seddon  attempted  to  get  further  reinforcements  from  Beau- 
regard, but  that  general  could  spare  no  more  men.  On  May 
7,  Davis  telegraphed  Pemberton  these  fateful  words:  "To 
hold  both  Vicksburg  and  Port  Hudson  is  necessary  to  a  con- 
nection with  the  trans-Mississippi.  You  may  expect  what- 
ever is  in  my  power  to  do." 

Johnston  was  uneasy  because  Pemberton  had  dispersed 
his  forces  in  seeking  to  protect  the  approaches  to  Vicksburg. 
On  the  first  of  May,  and  again  two  weeks  later,  he  urged 
Pemberton  to  concentrate  but  failed  to  go  to  the  scene  of 
action  and  take  the  reins  himself.    In  fact,  he  did  not  go  to 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  215 

Mississippi  until  the  first  of  May  and  then  only  at  the  ex- 
press order  of  the  President,  who  was  alarmed  at  the  situa- 
tion. Davis,  who  was  making  efforts  to  get  troops  for  Pem- 
berton  from  some  quarter  or  another,  advised  him  to  call 
for  mounted  volunteers.  Pemberton  sadly  replied  that  no 
reliance  could  be  put  on  emergency  soldiers.  The  President 
was  indulging  in  hope  rather  than  calculating  very  exactly 
the  available  forces  at  his  command. 

Johnston  was  at  the  capital,  Jackson,  with  a  small  army. 
Seeing  that  Pemberton  was  about  to  be  enclosed,  he  ordered 
that  general  to  move  eastward  and  join  him.  Pemberton, 
who  was  somewhat  confused  by  Davis's  instruction  to  hold 
Vicksburg  and  the  departmental  commander's  order  to  aban- 
don it,  acted  rather  feebly.  Still  he  advanced  from  the 
shelter  of  his  fortifications,  only  to  be  outgeneraled  and 
beaten  by  Grant  at  Baker's  Creek  and  the  Big  Black  and 
driven  back  into  the  city.  Johnston,  knowing  well  the  issue 
of  a  siege,  on  May  1 7  directed  Pemberton  to  escape  from  the 
side  of  Vicksburg  not  yet  enclosed.  But  Pemberton  was 
somewhat  demoralized  by  his  defeats  and  did  not  wish  to 
leave  his  earthworks  again.  After  a  council  of  war,  he 
decided  to  disobey  his  superior  and  hold  the  town.  He 
telegraphed  Davis  that  he  had  been  beaten  because  he  had 
felt  obliged  to  obey  Johnston's  orders  and  so  had  advanced 
beyond  his  defenses.  This  was  on  May  19.  Thus,  at  this 
moment,  Davis  learned  that  Pemberton  had  been  defeated 
and  shut  up  in  Vicksburg.  A  situation  had  been  created 
which  the  government  had  not  desired  but  which  had  to  be 
faced.  Both  Vicksburg  and  the  army  were  certainly  lost 
unless  measures  were  taken  for  their  relief. 

Pemberton  has  been  generally  condemned  for  his  de- 
cision, but  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  defense  of  his  action. 


216  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

If  he  had  evacuated  Vicksburg,  the  city  would  have  been 
lost,  and  the  city  itself,  not  Pemberton's  small  army,  was 
Grant's  objective.  The  last  link  in  the  connection  with  the 
trans-Mississippi  would  have  fallen  into  Union  hands,  for 
Port  Hudson  must  have  been  lost  with  Vicksburg.  The 
Union  strategy  would  have  accomplished  the  great  purpose 
at  which  it  had  aimed  since  the  beginning  of  the  war.  With 
Vicksburg  in  his  hands  early  in  the  summer,  Grant  might 
have  completed  the  conquest  of  the  state  of  Mississippi  be- 
fore the  end  of  the  campaign  or  have  turned  against  Bragg. 
Pemberton,  by  holding  on  to  Vicksburg,  committed  Grant 
to  a  perilous  siege  and  gave  the  Southern  government  the 
chance  to  capture  his  army.  All  in  all,  then,  Pemberton's 
decision,  though  not  the  result  of  enlightened  calculation, 
seems  to  have  been  a  wise  one  in  that  it  saved  Mississippi 
from  immediate  conquest  and  put  Grant  in  a  dangerous  posi- 
tion. Unfortunately,  however,  Pemberton  showed  little 
energy  in  his  preparations  for  the  siege,  leaving  the  city  in- 
sufficiently provisioned,  though  large  stores  had  been  ac- 
cumulated in  the  neighborhood.  The  army  starved  when 
it  should  have  had  a  sufficiency. 

The  Confederate  government  ^considered  the  situation 
created  by  the  siege  of  Vicksburg.  The  city  had  success- 
fully stood  a  siege  the  preceding  summer  and  was  almost 
impregnable  in  the  hands  of  a  resolute  soldier.  Thus  there 
would  be  time  enough  to  evolve  a  policy  for  its  relief.  Not 
to  relieve  it  meant  the  loss  of  the  trans-Mississippi  and  the 
utter  depression  of  the  whole  country.  A  mistake  now  would 
probably  be  decisive  of  the  fate  of  the  war. 

Davis  was  accustomed  to  rely  on  Seddon  for  advice  in 
all  the  theaters  of  the  war  but  Virginia,  where  Lee  nat- 
urally dominated.    The  great  general  had  won  the  right  to 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  217 

follow  his  own  judgment  in  all  matters  that  concerned  his 
army  and  his  terrain.  Lee  had  always  considered  his  opera- 
tions as  totally  distinct  from  those  in  the  West.  He  gave 
little  thought  to  the  war  elsewhere,  concentrating  his  energies 
on  the  direction  of  his  own  army.  It  had  been  possible  for 
him  to  lose  sight  of  the  West  without  disaster  in  1862,  when 
the  fall  of  Richmond  impended  and  the  West  was  no  harder 
pushed  than  Virginia.  That  campaign  had  won  compara- 
tive safety  for  the  Confederacy  in  the  East  while  the  situa- 
tion in  the  West  constantly  grew  in  threat,  but  Lee  still 
continued  to  think  of  his  own  problems  rather  than  of  the 
general  military  situation.  It  thus  happened  that  when  the 
victory  of  Chancellors ville  freed  Lee  from  all  apprehension 
for  Virginia  for  the  immediate  future  and  allowed  him  to 
turn  his  thoughts  elsewhere  he  knew  little  of  the  needs  of 
the  West.  Yet  the  West  could  no  longer  be  ignored  by  the 
successful  commander  of  the  army  of  Virginia.  It  was  the 
problem  the  Confederacy  had  to  solve. 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  Lee's  one  fault  as  a  commander  ap- 
peared. Accustomed  all  his  life  to  serve  a  firmly  established 
government  with  rooted  precedents,  he  could  not  adapt  him- 
self to  the  conditions  of  a  state  waging  a  revolutionary  war 
for  existence.  He  thought  that  he  could  do  his  duty  in  his 
own  sphere  and  leave  the  government  to  look  out  for  the 
other  armies  and  the  other  fronts.  He  could  not  do  this  and 
win  the  war.  The  inexorable  logic  of  events  demanded  that 
he  become  the  military  leader  of  the  whole  Confederacy, 
in  fact  if  not  in  name,  and  bend  his  great  powers  to  the  task 
of  coordinating  the  movements  of  the  various  armies. 

He  might  have  become  an  invaluable  adviser  to  Davis  on 
the  entire  field  of  operations.  If  he  had  gone  West  early  in 
1863,  when  he  could  have  left  his  army  in  safety  under 


218  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Jackson,  he  would  have  come  to  understand  the  dangers 
that  threatened  the  country  as  a  whole  and  he  would  have 
altered  his  own  military  policy.  If  he  had  demanded  a 
concentration  at  Vicksburg,  the  concentration  would  have 
occurred,  for  Davis  would  not  have  refused  to  follow  his  ad- 
vice on  such  a  matter.  Lee  did  not  lack  the  mental  gifts 
of  a  strategist  of  the  very  first  order,  but  he  was  destined 
never  to  exert  those  gifts  to  the  full.  To  the  end  he  re- 
mained the  commander  of  a  single  army  instead  of  the 
generalissimo  for  which  nature  intended  him. 

Davis,  jealous  as  he  was  of  tactless  interference,  would 
not  have  resented  Lee's  advice  on  the  West.  Indeed,  the 
President  at  this  time  really  yearned  for  an  adviser.  He 
had  more  confidence  in  Lee  than  in  any  one  else  and  late  in 
1863  he  appealed  to  him  to  go  West  and  find  out  what  ailed 
the  cause  there,  but  Lee  would  not  go.  He  was  rooted  in 
Virginia.  The  President  actually  had  no  very  confidential 
adviser  at  this  moment,  for  Seddon's  star  was  waning.  Sed- 
don  had  advocated  Johnston's  Western  appointment  and  had 
constantly  supported  that  general,  and  now  Jefferson  Davis 
had  once  more  become  disgruntled  with  Johnston — this  time, 
permanently. 

Something  had  to  be  done,  and  nobody  saw  this  more 
clearly  than  Davis  himself.  If  Lee  stood  on  the  defensive 
behind  the  Rappahannock,  Vicksburg  would  be  surely  lost. 
Then  Bragg  might  be  overwhelmed  and  the  whole  forces 
of  the  Union  would  be  concentrated  on  Lee.  The  war  would 
be  won  in  detail  while  the  Confederates  looked  on.  What 
would  Lee  advise  and  Davis  do  in  the  great  emergency  that 
confronted  the  country?    That  was  the  question. 

There  were  three  courses  promising  large  results.  Lee 
might  invade  the  North  and  seek  to  win  the  war  at  a  stroke. 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  219 

Or  a  part  of  Lee's  army  might  be  sent  to  strengthen  Bragg 
for  an  advance  against  Rosecrans.  Lastly,  Johnston's  weak 
army  might  be  reen  forced  for  an  attack  on  Grant  and  the 
relief  of  Vicksburg. 

The  first  plan  was  the  easiest  to  execute  but  the  most 
dangerous.  An  invasion  of  the  North  in  1863  by  the  small 
Southern  army,  which  must  advance  in  the  teeth  of  the  larger 
Northern  army,  was  a  perilous  undertaking.  Defeat  would 
mean  the  loss  of  the  West  and  possibly  the  speedy  end  of  the 
struggle.  Yet  Lee  hoped  that  the  threat  against  Washing- 
ton would  relieve  the  pressure  in  the  West  by  drawing 
troops  to  the  East.  There  was  a  chance  that  this  would 
happen,  but  not  a  very  good  chance. 

Yet  this  plan  was  possibly  better  than  that  of  sending 
a  detachment  from  Lee's  army  to  Bragg  or  Johnston.  In 
Bragg's  unskillful  hands  a  larger  army  might  have  gained  no 
advantages  whatever:  there  might  have  been  only  another 
fruitless  Murfreesboro.  Johnston,  with  more  troops,  would 
still,  in  all  probability,  have  lacked  the  audacity  to  attack 
Grant.  Lee  would  have  been  reduced  to  impotence  for 
nothing. 

The  situation  called  for  Lee  himself  to  go  West — to  en- 
large his  duties  and  powers  beyond  the  command  of  the  Vir- 
ginia army — and  take  the  supreme  command  there.  And  if 
he  had  studied  both  the  Eastern  and  Western  fronts,  he  must 
have  seen  that  the  necessities  and  opportunities  were  far 
greater  in  the  latter  than  in  the  former.  Washington,  in 
1863,  was  so  strongly  fortified  and  garrisoned  that  to  take 
it  was  a  desperate  adventure.  Yet  to  win  a  victory  without 
taking  Washington — to  win  and  retreat  into  Virginia — 
would  hardly  have  ended  the  war.  And  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  hazard  a  battle  quickly  in  the  North,  because  the 


220  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Union,  if  given  time,  could  concentrate  overwhelming  num- 
bers against  Lee's  small  army. 

The  risks  of  going  West  were  no  greater  than  the  risks  of 
invading  Pennsylvania;  they  were  not  so  great.  By  taking 
a  corps  to  other  fields,  Lee  would  expose  Richmond,  but  the 
line  of  the  Rappahannock  was  difficult  to  force  and  the  Union 
army  was  not  fit  for  an  immediate  offensive.  Longstreet 
could  probably  have  held  the  Rappahannock  for  a  month, 
and  in  a  month  many  things  may  happen.  Paradoxical  as 
it  may  sound  under  the  circumstances,  the  opportunity  for 
the  Confederates  to  win  a  decisive  victory  was  better  in  the 
West  than  in  the  East.  Grant  had  given  an  opening  by  lay- 
ing siege  to  Vicksburg.  He  was  at  a  great  distance  from  his 
base  of  supplies  and  wholly  dependent  for  his  communica- 
tions on  the  Mississippi  River.  Heavy  artillery  might  sink 
or  stop  his  transports,  and  then  he  would  be  in  a  precarious 
position  indeed.  With  the  river  closed,  he  must  have  faced 
the  probability  of  surrender.  If  Lee  had  studied  the  war 
as  a  whole,  he  would  have  seen  this  opportunity  not  merely 
to  win  a  battle  but  to  capture  an  army.  Grant's  defeat  would 
almost  certainly  have  turned  the  tide  in  favor  of  the  South. 
The  expulsion  of  the  Union  forces  from  Tennessee  would 
have  followed  and  Kentucky,  which  in  1863  was  overwhelm- 
ingly Confederate  in  sentiment,  would  have  been  thrown 
open  to  the  Southern  arms.  The  Northern  people,  already 
showing  signs  of  war  weariness,  would  probably  have  re- 
fused to  support  much  longer  a  losing  game.  Such  were  the 
possibilities  that  would  have  attended  Lee  if  he  had  struck 
West  with  one  of  his  corps  and  his  best  artillery. 

Lee  might  first  have  united  with  Bragg,  driven  Rose- 
crans  back  and  then  cut  Grant's  river  communications,  or 
he  might  have  proceeded  directly  to  Mississippi  and  joined 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  221 

forces  with  Johnston.  In  either  case,  Grant  would  have 
been  in  great  danger.  He  would  have  been  between  the 
garrison  and  the  relieving  army  and  would  have  been  forced 
to  fight  at  every  disadvantage.  If  Grant  were  taken,  Lee 
might  combine  all  the  forces  within  reach  and  advance  to- 
ward the  Ohio  River  at  the  head  of  120,000  men.  Such 
was  the  opportunity  offered  by  the  siege  of  Vicksburg. 

Davis  and  Seddon  wished  to  reenforce  Johnston  in  Mis- 
sissippi for  the  relief  of  Vicksburg.  Seddon  particularly  ad- 
vocated it.  For  the  week  of  May  7-13,  1863,  Davis  was 
confined  to  his  house  by  one  of  his  frequent  attacks  of  ill- 
ness. In  this  time,  Seddon,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  war 
office  and  who  sometimes  acted  without  consulting  his  chief, 
wrote  to  Lee  desiring  him  to  send  Pickett's  division  to 
Mississippi.  Lee,  ignoring  Seddon,  replied  to  Davis  that 
to  detach  troops  from  his  army  meant  the  loss  of  Virginia 
— that  it  was  a  choice  between  losing  Virginia  and  losing 
Mississippi.  The  President  sent  Lee's  letter  to  Seddon 
with  the  statement  that  he  approved  of  it.  This  was  a 
snub  for  the  Secretary  of  War,  who  was  much  concerned 
about  the  West,  but  Seddon  had  lost  some  of  his  influence 
with  the  President  while  Lee  was  all-powerful. 

On  May  15,  Davis  was  back  in  his  office,  and  on  this 
day  a  council  of  war  was  held.  Lee,  Davis  and  Seddon 
were  closeted  for  a  long  period;  for  a  time  Generals  Stuart 
and  French  were  admitted  to  the  conference.  Lee's  views 
prevailed.  It  was  decided  not  to  send  troops  to  the  West, 
but  to  invade  Pennsylvania  instead,  for  it  was  at  this 
time  that  the  invasion  of  the  North  was  determined 
upon. 

Lee  was  wholly  responsible  for  the  decision.  Both  Davis 
and  Seddon  had  preferred  the  relief  of  Vicksburg,  but  Lee 


222  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

now  won  them  over  to  his  plan.  He  had  a  natural  re- 
luctance to  seeing  the  fine  army  he  had  built  up  dismem- 
bered and  a  part  transferred  to  other  generals  in  other 
fields.  In  this  he  was  right:  he  was  far  abler  than  any 
other  Southern  general  to  conduct  aggressive  operations. 
Only  he  was  wrong  in  selecting  the  invasion  of  Pennsylvania 
instead  of  going  to  the  rescue  of  the  collapsing  defensive 
system  in  the  West.    Very  wrong. 

The  invasion  of  Pennsylvania  in  1863  was  so  risky  a 
movement  that  it  should  never  have  been  tried.  Lee's  means 
were  too  slender  for  such  an  effort.  The  year  1861  had 
been  the  time  for  the  Southern  offense;  now  the  South  did 
not  have  the  strength  for  it.  Its  defensive  line  was  break- 
ing down;  whole  states  were  slipping  from  its  grasp  as  well 
as  the  Mississippi  River;  and  therefore  it  had  no  title  to 
such  a  luxury  as  the  offensive.  The  movement  into  the  North 
was  unsound  strategy;  and,  curiously  enough,  on  the  very 
day  on  which  it  was  decided  on,  May  15,  Beauregard  wrote 
condemning  it.  Longstreet  did  not  like  it  and  made  many 
objections. 

Lee's  reasons  for  the  invasion,  as  given,  are  unconvincing. 
He  declared  that  he  wished  to  relieve  Virginia  for  a  time 
from  the  burden  of  the  war  and  find  food  for  his  hungry 
troops  in  the  fertile  fields  of  the  North.  Besides,  a  threat 
against  Washington  might  draw  Grant  from  Vicksburg. 
Beyond  this,  Lee  seems  to  have  had  no  definite  strategic 
objective:  if  he  had,  it  is  not  on  record.  Perhaps  he  thought 
that  another  victory,  won  on  Northern  soil,  would  bring 
about  the  desired  European  intervention  and  the  end  of  the 
conflict.  Such  a  result  might  have  followed,  but  it  is  by 
no  means  certain  that  it  would,  and  a  fruitless  victory  in 
Pennsylvania  would  have  been  more  than  counterbalanced 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  223 

by  the  fall  of  Vicksburg.  All  in  all,  it  would  seem  that 
the  invasion  of  Pennsylvania  offered  few  advantages  to 
compensate  for  the  terrible  risks  it  entailed. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Lee's  predilection  for  the  East  led 
him  into  a  serious  miscalculation.  The  case  was  not,  as 
he  put  it,  one  of  losing  either  Virginia  or  Mississippi:  later 
in  the  same  year,  when  his  army  was  smaller,  Lee  sent  a 
part  of  it  West  without  losing  Richmond.  What  was  done 
in  September,  1863,  could  have  been  better  done  in  May. 
The  real  issue  was  whether  the  Confederates  would  co- 
operate, East  and  West,  and  possibly  win,  or  continue  to 
maintain  two  separate  wars  and  lose.  Lee's  plan  con- 
tinued the  old  system  of  isolated  operations.  He  had  not 
schooled  himself  to  see  the  war  as  a  whole  but  only  his 
own  theater  of  action. 

Jefferson  Davis  appears  to  have  consented  to  the  invasion 
of  Pennsylvania  with  some  reluctance.  Conversant  as  he 
was  with  conditions  on  all  the  fronts,  he  could  not  fail  to 
see  that  the  siege  of  Vicksburg  threatened  the  existence  of 
the  Confederacy  and  might  be  the  determining  event  of 
the  war.  It  is  certain  that  he  would  not  have  given  his  con- 
sent to  Lee's  plan  if  the  general  had  not  urged  it  warmly. 
This  seems  to  have  been  the  one  occasion  of  the  war  when 
Lee  asserted  himself  strongly,  and  it  was  the  one  occasion 
v/hen  he  happened  to  be  wrong.  Davis  must  have  been  deeply 
impressed  by  Lee's  confidence  in  his  ability  to  win  a  victory 
north  of  the  Potomac  or  he  would  never  have  left  Vicksburg 
to  its  fate.  He  has  been  blamed  for  preferring  his  own 
judgment  to  that  of  his  generals,  but  in  this  case  when 
he  went  against  his  judgment  he  made  the  mistake  that 
decided  the  outcome  of  the  war.  Yet  he  cannot  well  be 
censured  for  letting  Lee's  wishes  be  decisive,  because  Lee 


224  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

had  proved  his  right  to  decide  the  action  of  his  army  by 
winning  great  battles. 

In  giving  way  to  Lee,  the  President  displayed  a  patriotism 
so  lofty  that  it  deserves  a  word  of  comment.  Not  only  did 
just  strategic  considerations  urge  the  relief  of  Vicksburg 
rather  than  the  risky  Northern  offensive,  but  the  claims  of 
sentiment  and  self-interest  as  well.  In  sending  Lee  to 
Pennsylvania,  Davis  turned  his  back  on  his  own  state 
and  .his  -own  estates.  He  abandoned  his  people  and  his 
property  for  the  chance  of  winning  a  decisive  victory 
elsewhere. 

The  decision  was  made  on  May  15.  But  on  May  19, 
Davis  learned  that  Pemberton  had  been  beaten  and  shut  up 
in  Vicksburg,  and  in  the  next  few  days  the  dispatches  con- 
firmed the  report.  He  also  learned  of  Pemberton's  de- 
cision to  remain  in  Vicksburg  rather  than  try  to  retreat. 
The  situation  was  so  serious  that  Davis  determined  to 
bring  it  before  the  cabinet  for  final  consideration. 

The  military  problem  was  debated  for  the  whole  length  of 
a  day,  May  26,  1863.  All  the  members  of  the  cabinet  seem 
to  have  been  present,  though  Lee  was  not  at  the  council. 
There  were  the  President,  grave  and  thoughtful,  taking 
little  part  in  the  debate;  Benjamin,  quick,  dapper,  debonair; 
Memminger,  small,  restless,  antique  looking;  Seddon,  death- 
like, calm,  convincing;  Mallory,  heavy  and  silent;  Reagan, 
tall  and  bearded,  almost  dominating  the  meeting  with  the 
fullness  and  intensity  with  which  he  spoke. 

The  cabinet,  in  general,  seems  to  have  felt  that  the  mili- 
tary directors  had  already  decided  on  the  course  of  action 
and  that  there  was  no  use  to  advocate  a  change.  One  man, 
however,  the  Postmaster-General,  was  unalterably  opposed 
to  the  invasion  of  Pennsylvania.     He  was  deeply  moved, 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  225 

for  he  was  from  Texas  and  he  felt  that  the  Eastern  offensive 
was  tantamount  to  an  abandonment  of  the  West.  He  urged, 
instead,  that  Lee  should  feint  against  the  North  and  then 
send  a  part  of  his  army  to  Mississippi.  His  eloquent  plea 
for  the  West  fell  on  dull  ears:  it  was  decided  to  send  Lee 
across  the  Potomac  and  to  obtain  reen  for  cements  for  John- 
ston from  the  Gulf  states,  where  there  were  few  troops 
enough  already.  In  truth,  the  cabinet  left  Pemberton  to 
his  fate  and  staked  everything  on  the  invasion  of  the  North.1 
In  such  manner  did  Jefferson  Davis  turn  from  the  defensive 
to  the  offensive,  definitely  abandoning  the  strategic  concep- 
tion with  which  he  had  begun  the  war. 

Reagan  could  not  sleep  that  night,  he  tells  us,  he  was  so 
oppressed  by  the  fatality  of  the  decision.  Early  next  morn- 
ing, which  was  Sunday,  he  ventured  to  disturb  the  Presi- 
dent by  requesting  him  to  call  another  cabinet  meeting  to 
reconsider  the  question.  Davis  good-naturedly  consented, 
but  before  the  meeting  was  held  Reagan  learned  that  the 
cabinet  was  irrevocably  committed  to  the  invasion  plan  and 
he  abandoned  his  opposition  in  despair.  Some  time  later 
Seddon  wrote  Lee  that  he  fully  approved  of  his  offensive 
in  the  North,  that  it  was  high  time  to  give  up  the  defensive. 
From  this  it  would  appear  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  solely 
responsible  for  the  cabinet  council  and  that  he  convened 
it  because  he  was  far  from  satisfied  that  Lee's  movement 
was  the  best  policy.  The  overwhelming  support  given  Lee 
by  the  cabinet  must  have  reassured  him  or  perhaps  led 
him  to  feel  that  he  shared  the  responsibility  for  the  de- 
cision with  others.  He  was  soon  to  learn,  however,  that 
success  was  credited  to  others  and  failure  blamed  on  him- 

1  Reagan,  152.    The  agreement  of  Reagan  and  Jones  fixes  May  26  as  the 
date  of  the  cabinet  meeting. 


226  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

self.  The  country  at  large  never  even  knew  that  the  cabinet 
had  passed  on  the  invasion  of  Pennsylvania. 

Davis  seems  to  have  had  misgivings  to  the  last;  indeed, 
he  was  so  torn  with  anxiety  that  he  was  ill  for  the  next  few 
weeks  and  in  bed  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Gettysburg. 
He  vainly  sought  to  reassure  himself  about  Vicksburg, 
greedily  seizing  on  Pemberton's  dispatches  announcing  the 
defeat  of  Grant's  assaults  on  the  city.  He  is  said  to  have 
written  Lee  a  letter  cautioning  him  not  to  go  too  far  afield. 
Lee,  for  his  part,  had  serious  reason  to  complain  of  the  gov- 
ernment. He  had  stipulated  as  a  part  of  his  plan  that  a 
skeleton  force  should  be  stationed  in  northern  Virginia 
under  Beauregard  to  feint  against  Washington  from  the 
south  while  he  himself  went  on  into  Pennsylvania.  In 
this  way  he  hoped  to  prevent  the  concentration  of  the  Union 
forces  against  himself.  Davis  agreed  but  finally  wrote  Lee 
that  an  army  could  not  be  raised  for  the  purpose.  As  Lee 
had  asked  for  a  demonstration,  not  a  serious  movement, 
it  would  appear  that  he  was  ill-served  in  this  rather  im- 
portant particular.  The  Unionists  were  relieved  of  fear  for 
Washington  from  the  South  and  were  enabled  to  turn  their 
full  force  on  Lee. 

Lee  moved  into  Pennsylvania,  with  Hooker  following.  At 
this  moment,  the  last  of  June,  the  Union  general  was  super- 
seded by  George  Gordon  Meade,  who  assumed  the  com- 
mand under  all  the  disadvantages  inseparable  from  such 
hasty  changes.  The  hostile  armies  came  into  collision  at 
Gettysburg  in  the  afternoon  of  July  i,  1863.  The  meet- 
ing was  somewhat  accidental,  but  Lee  had  his  troops  well  in 
hand  and  knew  that  a  conflict  was  imminent.  It  is  prob- 
able that  he  wished  to  fight  while  Meade  was  still  new 
in  the  saddle. 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  227 

The  engagement  began  with  an  attack  of  two  of  Lee's 
three  corps  commanders,  A.  P.  Hill  and  R.  E.  Ewell,  on  a 
Union  force  at  Gettysburg.  The  Northerners,  overwhelmed 
by  numbers,  resisted  with  desperate  valor  and  merely  re- 
tired to  a  ridge  of  steep  hills  south  of  the  town,  where  they 
took  position.  If  the  Confederates  had  followed  up 
their  advantage  without  delay,  they  might  possibly  have 
stormed  the  heights  and  won  the  battle  then  and  there. 
Rut  they  had  suffered  heavy  losses  and  they  halted,  uncer- 
tain what  to  do. 

Lee,  coming  on  the  field  about  this  time,  at  once  realized 
that  fate  had  put  in  his  way  a  great  opportunity.  His  force 
of  65,000  men  was  on  the  field  or  in  the  vicinity,  while 
only  about  half  of  Meade's  army  of  100,000  was  at  hand. 
Meade  was  caught  concentrating  but  not  concentrated,  with 
his  hurrying  regiments  stretched  out  many  miles  to  the  rear. 
It  was  Lee's  one  chance  to  fight  with  the  advantage  of  num- 
bers on  his  side.  Instant  action  was  necessary,  however, 
for  in  a  few  hours  the  whole  Union  army  would  be  present. 

The  Southern  general  held  a  brief  council  of  war  with 
Hill,  Ewell  and  Early,  looking  over  at  the  purple  heights 
where  lay  the  Union  army  as  they  darkened  in  the  sum- 
mer twilight  and  directing  his  subordinates  to  assault  them 
at  dawn.  The  latter  had  no  stomach  for  a  venture  so  des- 
perate and  succeeded  in  persuading  Lee  to  pass  on  the  task 
to  Longstreet,  who  was  absent.  They  reported  that  the 
ground  on  their  right  was  more  favorable  to  attack  than 
that  in  front  of  their  two  corps.  Lee,  therefore,  decided 
to  have  Longstreet  make  the  assault.  He  is  not  to  blame 
for  this  change  of  plan.  A  commander  is  forced  to  rely 
on  the  reports  of  his  subordinates,  for  in  the  hour  of 
battle  decisions  must  be  made  quickly  and  there  is  little 


228  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

time  to  verify  information..  Possibly,  too,  Lee  was  influenced 
by  the  fact  that  Longstreet  was  his  most  experienced  corps 
commander. 

Longstreet,  when  given  his  orders,  demurred — almost  re- 
monstrated. He,  likewise,  flinched  from  an  attack  that 
must  be  bloody  and  might  be  fatal.  He  advised  a  move- 
ment to  the  rear  of  the  Union  army,  but  Lee  impatiently 
refused,  since  he  desired  to  fight  before  the  Union  army 
was  fully  concentrated.  He  repeated  his  directions  for  an 
attack  in  the  early  morning. 

It  was  a  situation  in  which  everything  depended  on  prompt 
action.  Longstreet  most  probably  would  have  carried  the 
heights,  steep  as  they  were,  if  he  had  advanced  at  dawn, 
for  at  that  time  the  position  was  thinly  held.  But  he  dallied 
through  the  day,  insisting  that  he  could  not  move  until 
one  of  his  divisions  arrived,  and  did  not  launch  his  troops 
against  the  Union  lines  until  late  in  the  afternoon.  By 
that  time  the  whole  Northern  army  had  come  up.  Numbers, 
as  well  as  position,  were  now  against  the  Confederates. 

Here,  it  would  appear,  Lee  made  his  mistake.  He  should 
have  spurred  Longstreet  to  prompter  action,  or,  failing 
in  that,  have  abandoned  the  attack.  A  general,  however,  is 
forced  to  take  great  chances  if  he  would  achieve  large  re- 
sults. Indeed,  the  art  of  war  is  the  game  of  taking  chances 
— of  making  a  swift  guess  and  then  acting  on  the  guess. 
The  end  of  military  education  is  to  enable  a  commander, 
in  the  distraction  of  battle,  to  guess  correctly  from  the  faulty 
and  misleading  information  at  his  disposal,  to  approximate 
the  truth.  Lee  had  been  right  in  his  decision  to  attack  at 
dawn:  he  probably  calculated  that  even  in  the  afternoon 
the  Union  army  was  not  fully  concentrated,  and  so  he  let 
the  assault  proceed.    He  had  taken  desperate  chances  from 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  229 

the  moment  of  assuming  command  of  the  army  and  had  es- 
caped disaster:  he  now  took  one  more  chance.  This  time 
he  lost. 

Longstreet's  effort  was  very  powerful  when,  finally,  he 
made  it.  He  handled  his  men  admirably  in  action,  and  they 
were  superb  veterans,  the  best  soldiers  then  in  the  world. 
They  stormed  the  wooded  mountainside,  in  spite  of  ob- 
stacles and  of  the  artillery  and  musketry  fire,  and  almost 
carried  the  crest  and  won  the  battle.  But  exhausted  by 
their  exertions  and  retarded  by  the  valiant  Union  defense, 
they  were  held  at  the  very  crest  and  could  go  no  farther. 
Darkness  then  came  on. 

The  battle  had  not  been  won,  but  still  Lee  did  not  think 
that  it  was  lost.  To  withdraw  now  would  be  to  acknowledge 
defeat  at  a  moment  when  victory  was  no  longer  a  luxury 
but  a  necessity.  The  West  had  been  sacrificed  to  gain 
this  opportunity.  Lee,  consequently,  determined  to  take 
yet  another  chance.  He  entrusted  Longstreet  with  a  sec- 
ond attack,  to  be  made  the  following  day — this  time  on  the 
Union  center. 

Longstreet,  now  almost  at  the  point  of  mutiny,  misman- 
aged the  enterprise  badly.  After  a  furious  cannonade 
the  line  advanced,  but  only  a  small  force,  Pickett's 
division  from  eastern  Virginia,  with  some  North  Carolina 
regiments,  persisted  in  the  charge.  The  Southerners,  ad- 
vancing with  iron  discipline  through  an  unspeakable  hell  of 
shrapnel  and  rifle  fire,  carried  the  Union  trenches  with  the 
bayonet  and  planted  their  red  flags.  For  a  moment  they 
seemed  to  have  won  the  battle.  The  next  instant  they  were 
engulfed  by  masses  of  Union  infantry  and  killed  or  captured. 

Lee  was  now  obliged  to  retreat  into  Virginia,  which  he 
did  in  safety.    The  Union  army  was  too  shattered  to  make 


230  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

a  vigorous  pursuit.  When  the  news  of  the  battle  crossed  the 
sea,  Europe  began  to  believe  in  the  power  of  the  North  to 
conquer  the  South.  Hope  of  intervention  faded  from  South- 
ern minds. 

Lee's  admirers  have  been  hard  put  to  defend  Gettysburg. 
Yet  he  is  not  censurable  for  fighting  there,  where  he  had 
an  opportunity  to  win  a  victory,  but  for  the  invasion  of 
Pennsylvania  itself.  He  is  to  blame  for  preferring  what 
was  at  best  a  dubious  chance  to  gain  a  battle  to  the  relief 
of  Vicksburg,  a  matter  of  the  most  extreme  importance. 
He  came  nearer  than  might  have  been  expected  to  suc- 
cess. He  failed  at  Gettysburg  simply  because  he  did  not 
have  a  subordinate  capable  unhesitatingly  of  taking  the 
terrible  risks  through  the  taking  of  which  victory  was  alone 
possible.  The  assault  on  the  Union  position,  an  adventure 
attuned  to  the  brain  and  nerve  of  Jackson,  was  too  much 
for  the  other  generals.  Lee,  used  to  Jackson,  overrated 
them:  that  was  his  error. 

Vicksburg  fell  while  Gettysburg  was  being  fought.  Even 
if  Lee  had  won  the  battle  the  river  fortress  would  have 
fallen,  a  commentary  on  his  calculation  that  the  invasion 
of  Pennsylvania  might  draw  Grant  from  the  siege.  The 
Confederacy  had  changed  its  strategic  methods  without 
profit.  It  had  remained  on  the  defensive  when  the  offensive 
promised  much:  it  had  taken  the  offensive  when  its  de- 
fensive line  was  crumbling.    And  now  it  faced  final  defeat. 

Pemberton  had  waited  in  patient  trust  while  the  gov- 
ernment decided  on  the  Pennsylvania  enterprise  instead  of 
relieving  him.  On  May  2 1 ,  Davis  sent  this  characteristically 
vague  dispatch:  "I  made  every  effort  to  reenforce  you 
promptly,  which  I  am  grieved  was  not  successful.  Hope 
that  General  Johnston  will  join  you  with  force  enough  to 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  231 

break  up  the  investment  and  defeat  the  enemy.  Sympathiz- 
ing with  you  for  the  reverses  sustained,  I  pray  God  will 
give  success  to  you  and  the  brave  troops  under  your  com- 
mand." Davis  was  praying  instead  of  calculating,  a  habit 
of  his.  Pemberton  understood  that  he  was  lost  unless 
Johnston  could  do  something  for  him. 

Davis  had  an  idea  that  Johnston  had  enough  troops  to 
break  the  investment,  if  he  would  only  use  them.  Some- 
how he  had  a  tendency  to  evade  arithmetic:  his  imagina- 
tion did  not  like  the  cold  logic  of  figures.  Johnston  nerved 
himself  to  make  an  effort,  informing  Pemberton  by  the 
intrepid  messengers  who  still  made  their  way  through  the 
Union  lines  that  he  would  proceed  against  Grant.  He  had 
no  idea  of  winning  a  victory  with  his  small  force,  but  he 
thought  he  might  be  able  to  create  such  a  diversion  that 
Pemberton  could  slip  through  the  investing  lines.  Grant's 
skill  and  energy  frustrated  the  plan.  The  Union  army  was 
so  fortified  against  attacks  on  its  rear  that  Johnston  would 
not  advance. 

So  the  days  went  by;  June  wasted  while  the  besieged  army 
still  repulsed  assaults  and  looked  for  succor  and  Lee  was 
starting  on  his  fateful  march  into  Pennsylvania.  On  May 
26,  Davis  had  sent  Lee  the  following  dispatch:  "Our  intel- 
ligence from  Mississippi  is,  on  the  whole,  encouraging. 
Pemberton  is  stoutly  defending  the  intrenchments  at  Vicks- 
burg,  and  Johnston  has  an  army  outside,  which  I  suppose 
will  be  able  to  raise  the  siege,  and  combined  with  Pember- 
ton's  forces  may  win  a  victory."  *  Doubtless  this  was  the 
argument  used  in  the  cabinet  meeting  that  very  day,  on 
which  it  was  finally  decided  to  send  Lee  across  the  Potomac. 
It  shows  Davis's  obvious  misgivings,  but  it  also  shows  that 

10.  R.,  Series  I,  51,  Part  III,  Supplement,  717. 


232  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

he  did  not  fully  realize  that  Pemberton  was  lost  unless  help 
came  from  the  East.  This  is  what  he  should  have  understood. 

There  was  only  one  way  to  get  sufficient  troops  to  break 
Grant's  investment  and  enable  Pemberton  to  escape — by 
bringing  Bragg's  forces  to  Mississippi.  The  generals  west 
of  the  river  would  not  help:  perhaps  they  could  not  help, 
for  their  troops  were  bitterly  opposed  to  serving  on  the 
east  side  of  the  Mississippi.  Nothing  was  to  be  hoped 
for  from  the  East  or  the  far  South.  Johnston  now  knew, 
beyond  question,  that  he  could  order  his  forces  as  he  saw 
fit,  for  Davis  had  taken  the  pains  on  June  10  to  inform  him 
of  his  powers. 

Still  the  departmental  commander  did  not  want  to  use 
his  powers.  He  did  not  wish  to  take  the  responsibility  of 
ordering  Bragg's  army  to  Mississippi,  which  meant  the 
abandonment  of  Tennessee.  Neither  did  the  President  de- 
sire to  give  the  order  for  the  relinquishment  of  a  state.  Con- 
centration was  always  hateful  to  him,  for  concentration 
meant  inevitable  sacrifice.  In  a  letter  to  Kirby  Smith  he 
once  said,  "The  general  truth  that  power  is  increased  by 
the  concentration  of  an  army  is,  under  our  peculiar  cir- 
cumstances, subject  to  modification.  The  evacuation  of 
any  portion  of  territory  involves  not  only  the  loss  of  supplies, 
but  in  every  instance  has  been  attended  by  a  greater  or 
less  loss  of  troops."  Yet  the  only  effective  way  to  save 
Pemberton  was  by  the  use  of  Bragg's  army.  The  situation 
admirably  illustrates  the  strategic  unsoundness  of  the  in- 
vasion of  Pennsylvania.  In  the  absence  of  aid  from  Lee, 
the  rescue  of  Pemberton  was  premised  on  the  abandonment 
of  Tennessee  and  the  exposure  of  Alabama. 

Johnston  would  not  order  Bragg  to  Mississippi;  Davis 
would  not.     Between  them  the  catastrophe  occurred,  just 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  233 

as  a  baseball  drops  to  the  ground  between  two  hesitating 
fielders.  Seddon  attempted  to  spur  Kirby  Smith,  in  the 
trans-Mississippi,  to  action,  but  Smith  did  nothing  but  ex- 
plain why  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  do  anything.  Late 
in  June,  Johnston,  driven  by  the  dire  necessity  of  the  case, 
took  the  extraordinary  step  of  appealing  to  Joseph  Davis, 
the  President's  brother,  to  use  his  influence  to  induce  the 
government  to  order  Bragg  to  Vicksburg.  He  confessed  that 
he  was  unwilling  himself  to  issue  orders  that  meant  the 
giving  up  of  entire  states.1  It  was  a  question  of  losing 
Tennessee  or  the  whole  Mississippi  Valley,  and  the  head 
of  the  nation  should  decide  it,  not  a  general.  No  response 
came  to  this  appeal. 

Johnston  then  turned  despairingly  to  Kirby  Smith,  who 
advanced  toward  Vicksburg  and  then  allowed  himself  to 
be  halted.  There  was  no  other  resource.  Pemberton  sur- 
rendered on  July  4,  though  he  might  have  held  out  some 
time  longer.  Thus  the  Confederacy,  by  a  dramatic  coinci- 
dence, met  overpowering  disaster  in  both  East  and  West 
on  the  very  same  day.  Of  the  two  events,  Gettysburg  was 
the  less  important.  Vicksburg  was  a  far  greater  victory. 
Gettysburg,  however,  was  such  a  marvelous  drama  of  blood 
that  it  overshadowed  the  less  picturesque  but  more  solid 
accomplishment  on  the  Mississippi.  Yet  Grant's  triumph 
taught  the  world  that  the  Union  had  finished  a  mighty  task 
and  that  the  reduction  of  the  South  was  to  be  expected. 

Davis,  Johnston,  Lee — all  are  responsible  for  the  loss  of 
the  river  fortress.  Lee  preferred  to  risk  a  campaign  in  the 
North  to  the  rescue  of  Vicksburg.  Davis  is  somewhat  to 
blame  for  giving  up  the  defensive  policy  at  the  most  in- 
auspicious moment,  when  the  country  was  threatened  as 

10.  R.,  Series  I,  ji,  Part  III,  969. 


234*  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

never  before.  A  distant  counter-offensive  is  never  the  way 
to  relieve  such  a  situation  as  the  siege  of  Vicksburg:  Grant 
did  not  detach  a  man  from  his  army  on  account  of  the 
threat  against  Washington.  Neither  Davis  nor  Johnston 
could  make  the  decision  to  abandon  Tennessee  and  con- 
centrate all  the  Confederate  forces  in  order  to  save  Pember- 
ton.  For  lack  of  a  sound  strategic  plan  Grant  had 
triumphed. 

Gettysburg  has  been  much  overrated  in  the  character  of 
a  decisive  battle.  It  was,  in  reality,  very  indecisive.  Even 
if  Lee  had  won,  it  would  probably  not  have  been  decisive. 
The  Union  army,  driven  from  its  heights,  would  have  fallen 
back  toward  Washington  and  would  have  been  very  heavily 
reenforced.  Lee's  great  losses  would  have,  in  all  likelihood, 
forced  him  to  fight  another  desperate  battle  in  a  disadvan- 
tageous position  or  to  make  a  retreat.  The  battle  was  not 
felt  to  be  a  decisive  defeat  by  the  Southern  people;  indeed, 
it  did  not  much  affect  the  imagination  of  the  South  at  the 
time.  The  army  thought  that  it  had  merely  failed  to  ac- 
complish the  impossible.  Its  morale  was  but  little  lowered. 
The  fall  of  Vicksburg  was  much  more  severely  felt,  for 
the  whole  lower  South  knew  what  the  loss  of  the  Mississippi 
meant.  The  cotton  states  began  to  despair  while  the  army 
of  Virginia  was  nearly  as  confident  as  ever.  If  the  man 
power  of  the  South  had  been  sufficient  to  replace  the 
losses  of  the  summer,  Gettysburg  would  not  have  been  con- 
sidered much  more  decisive  than  Fredericksburg,  a  battle 
it  rather  resembled. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  capture  of  Vicksburg  was  the 
greatest  success  won  on  either  side  in  the  whole  war.  An 
army  of  30,000  men;  a  strong  fortress,  the  check  to  the 
Union  navigation  of  the  Mississippi;  and  the  severance  of 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  235 

the  Confederacy — such  were  the  fruits  of  Grant's  memorable 
victory,  won  by  audacity  and  resolution.  The  whole  lower 
South  was  now  at  the  mercy  of  a  vigorous  offensive.  Vicks- 
burg  was  the  turning  point  of  the  struggle. 

The  double  catastrophe  of  July,  1863,  came  as  a  bitter 
blow  to  Davis.  For  days  he  hardly  ventured  out  of  the 
house,  so  prostrated  was  he  by  the  overthrow  of  his  high 
hopes.  Seddon  was  likewise  ill  from  anxiety  and  chagrin. 
Both  President  and  Secretary  of  War  had  relied  on  Lee, 
and  Lee  had  failed  them.  Mississippi  was  lost  and  yet 
Virginia  was  not  saved. 

Late  in  July,  Davis,  who  took  care  to  give  no  open  ex- 
pression to  his  disappointment,  wrote  Lee,  "In  various 
quarters  there  are  mutter ings  of  discontent,  and  threats  of 
alienation  are  said  to  exist,  with  preparation  for  organized 
opposition.  There  are  others,  who,  faithful  but  dissatisfied, 
find  an  appropriate  remedy  in  the  removal  of  officers  who 
have  not  succeeded."    (Italics  ours.) 

This  was  not  a  hint  for  Lee's  resignation  but,  in  reality, 
a  pledge  of  support.  But  the  general,  who  had  been  deeply 
hurt  by  his  failure,  replied,  "The  general  remedy  for  the 
want  of  success  in  a  military  commander  is  his  removal. 
...  I  have  been  prompted  by  these  reflections  more  than 
once  since  my  return  from  Pennsylvania  to  propose  to  your 
Excellency  the  propriety  of  selecting  another  commander 
for  the  army."    Another  letter  of  the  same  tenor  came  later. 

Davis  responded  with  such  a  generous  and  touching  ex- 
pression of  confidence  and  friendship  that  Lee  was  com- 
pletely reassured  and  the  always  pleasant  relations  of  the 
two  men  were  strengthened.  In  one  respect  Jefferson  Davis 
was  noble:  he  never  blamed  a  general  for  disaster  if  he  felt 
that  the  general  had  done  all  in  his  power  to  command  sue- 


236  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

cess.  In  fact,  want  of  success  sometimes  did  not  move 
him  when  it  should,  when  the  failure  was  the  general's. fault. 
Still  it  is  a  rather  rare  trait  in  rulers — since  rulers  bear 
the  burden  of  failure — to  sympathize  with  subordinates 
who  fail. 

Inevitably,  much  of  the  blame  for  the  fall  of  the  Con- 
federacy rests  on  Jefferson  Davis.  Yet  it  cannot  be  said  to 
have  fallen  because  of  his  positive  mistakes.  In  the  crucial 
year  of  1863,  when  the  outcome  of  the  war  was  determined, 
he  was  not  directing  military  operations  but  was  mainly 
engaged  in  giving  support  to  the  two  leading  generals  of  the 
country,  who  occupied  the  two  most  important  posts  with 
a  wide  discretion.  They  were  not  hampered  by  instruc- 
tions. The  government  made  strenuous  efforts  to  supply 
Lee's  and  Johnston's  wants.  It  drafted  energetically;  man- 
ufactured munitions  busily;  seized  food  ruthlessly.  It  armed 
the  Western  forces  with  better  rifles  than  were  carried  by 
the  Union  troops.  If  the  incompetent  Bragg  and  Pemberton 
remained  at  the  head  of  armies,  this  was  less  Davis's  fault 
than  Johnston's,  for  Johnston  would  not  supersede  them 
or  recommend  successors.  Davis  has  been  especially  cen- 
sured for  keeping  Pemberton  in  command  at  Vicksburg; 
but  Pemberton,  though  he  might  have  saved  his  army,  could 
not  have  prevented  the  loss  of  Vicksburg  and  the  Mississippi 
River.  The  Mississippi  could  have  been  saved  only  by  a 
different  strategic  policy,  and  the  determination  of  the 
strategic  policy  did  not  rest  with  Pemberton.  Vicksburg 
and  the  trans-Mississippi  were  really  lost  on  May  26,  1863, 
when  the  cabinet  decided  on  the  Eastern  offensive  instead  of 
the  Western  defensive.  That  was  the  fatal  move  in  the  game. 

Bitterness  and  recrimination  were  the  order  of  the  day 
in  the  Confederate  camp  as  the  summer  waned.    Beauregard 


THE  GREAT  CRISIS  237 

had  favored  the  strengthening  of  Bragg's  army  instead  of 
the  movement  into  Pennsylvania;  and,  on  July  21,  with 
Vicksburg  fresh  in  mind,  Bragg  wrote  him  that  his  views 
were  identical.  " Failing  to  impress  the  idea  on  others  who 
control,  I  was  put  strictly  on  the  defensive,  and  have  strug- 
gled with  insufficient  force  until  at  length  depleted  so  far 
that  safety  compelled  me  to  fall  back."  This  might  seem 
a  reflection  on  the  government,  but  it  was  in  reality  a  hit 
at  Johnston.  Bragg  complained  that  Johnston  was  falling 
back  in  Mississippi,  yielding  ground  that  could  not  be  re- 
gained. If  the  army  of  Tennessee  had  been  ordered  to 
Mississippi,  a  victory  might  have  been  won.  About  the 
same  time  Polk  suggested  to  Davis  that  Johnston's  army 
be  united  with  Bragg's  and  the  whole  force  turned  on 
Rosecrans.  This  was  now  the  only  plan  worth  trying,  and 
before  long  Polk's  suggestion  was  adopted. 

Bragg's  change  of  attitude  toward  Johnston  was  im- 
portant. Bragg  was  close  to  Davis,  and  Davis  felt  that 
Johnston  was  largely  responsible  for  Pemberton's  capture: 
he  thought  that  Johnston  should  have  ordered  Bragg  to 
Mississippi,  just  as  Johnston  thought  that  the  President 
should  have  ordered  it.  In  February,  1863,  Bragg  had 
lauded  Johnston,  for  the  departmental  commander  had 
saved  him  from  dismissal.  But  Bragg  was  not  of  a  grate- 
ful disposition  and  he  had  come  to  dislike  Johnston  and 
to  disbelieve  in  him.  He  was  soon  to  become  Johnston's 
bitter  personal  enemy.  Thus  to  the  other  misfortunes  that 
weighted  the  Confederacy  in  the  latter  part  of  the  dis- 
astrous year,  1863,  was  added  a  feud  between  the  two  prin- 
cipal commanders  in  the  West.  It  was  not  likely,  then,  that 
the  close  of  1863  and  1864  would  prove  a  more  prosperous 
season. 


XI 

DOWNHILL 

THE  military  situation  had  now  changed  definitely  for 
the  worse.  And  with  military  disaster  inevitably  came 
other  troubles.  The  politicians  had  long  since  been  estranged 
from  Davis  and  were  in  opposition  or  retirement.  Toombs 
himself,  leaving  the  army  because  unpromoted,  entered 
the  Senate.  Yancey  had  passed  away  soon  after  Gettysburg. 
The  firebrand  of  secession  died  of  despondency,  for  he  had 
lost  all  hope  of  the  cause.  Stephens  was  busy  at  work  fos- 
tering dissatisfaction  with  the  government. 

Congress  still  bent  to  the  President's  will  in  the  belief 
that  dissension  was  suicidal.  The  fast-growing  opposition 
to  Davis,  however,  found  its  opportunity  in  the  state  govern- 
ments. It  was  one  of  his  weaknesses  that  he  was  seldom 
very  close  to  men,  and  he  had  completely  fallen  out  of 
touch  with  the  various  governors,  who  were  important  per- 
sonages. As  long  as  things  went  well,  state  opposition  to 
the  national  government  was  weak,  but  with  the  coming 
of  disaster  the  states  began  to  show  an  ominous  tendency 
to  act  independently.  They  began  to  resent  the  bur- 
dens put  on  them,  especially  the  never-ceasing  drain  of  the 
conscription. 

Serious  disaffection  showed  itself  in  North  Carolina  as 
early  as  the  end  of  1862.  The  able  governor,  Zebulon 
Vance,  who  had  sent  many  thousands  of  men  to  the  Con- 

238 


DOWNHILL  239 

federate  armies,  now  proposed  to  organize  a  state  army 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  protecting  the  community.1  He 
further  disobeyed  the  order  of  the  government  to  burn  cot- 
ton left  in  the  vicinity  of  the  enemy's  forces  and  generally 
assumed  an  insubordinate  attitude.  He  made  himself  a 
nuisance  by  forever  demanding  troops  to  guard  points  in 
North  Carolina,  regardless  of  the  general  military  situa- 
tion. Something  like  a  cleavage  appeared  in  the  state  be- 
tween those  who  were  thoroughly  loyal  to  the  Confederacy 
and  those  who  were  clamoring  for  peace  at  any  price.  At 
Raleigh,  in  September,  1863,  a  mob  sacked  the  office  of 
the  Standard,  accused  of  being  a  Unionist  newspaper,  where- 
upon another  mob  retaliated  by  attacking  the  ardently  se- 
cessionist Journal.2  This  latter  incident  was  indeed  an  evil 
omen. 

Disaffection  was  only  one  of  many  difficulties.  Already 
in  1863  the  financial  situation  was  appalling.  By  the  spring 
of  that  year  paper  money  had  sunk  to  ten  to  one  for  gold, 
and  new  issues,  forced  out  by  the  expenses  of  the  war, 
continued  to  depress  it.  Some  cotton  was  sent  out  of 
the  blockaded  ports  and  goods  still  came  in  from  Europe, 
but  not  enough  for  the  most  pressing  needs.  Fabrics  were 
hardly  obtainable,  and  luxuries  were  enormously  expensive. 
An  enterprising  blockade-runner  brought  in  a  cargo  of  cor- 
sets and  sold  it  almost  overnight  to  eager  women. 

The  pressing  need  was  food.  In  this  land  of  plenty  starva- 
tion had  begun  to  stalk.  The  army  already  in  1863  was 
living  on  half  rations,  while  there  was  also  great  want  among 
the  civilian  population  of  Richmond  and  other  places.  The 
old  trouble,  lack  of  organization  and  transportation,  was  at 

1  Jones,  1,  198. 
3  Ibid.,  2,  45. 


240  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

bottom  to  blame.  Though  Lee's  invasion  of  Pennsylvania 
was  largely  prompted  by  the  hope  of  finding  food  and 
though  stark  hunger  was  everywhere  in  the  theater  of  war, 
in  the  lower  South,  particularly  Georgia,  there  was  no  lack  of 
foodstuffs.  But  transportation  was  fatally  defective  and 
the  people  did  not  willingly  surrender  grain  and  meat  to 
requisitioning  commissaries  and  tax  gatherers.  Nor  did  they 
care  to  sell  provisions  for  money  that  was  steadily  declining 
in  value. 

At  the  first  of  April,  1863,  a  food  riot  broke  out  in  Rich- 
mond, which  the  government  had  great  difficulty  in  pro- 
visioning. A  crowd  of  a  thousand  or  so  women  marched 
on  the  food  shops,  looted  them  and  then  took  to  general 
pillaging.  Troops  were  called  out,  and  the  mayor  threatened 
to  fire  on  the  rioters.  At  this  juncture  Jefferson  Davis  ap- 
peared on  the  scene,  drawn  from  his  seclusion  by  the  ex- 
citement of  the  moment.  Mounting  a  dray,  he  appealed  to 
the  women  to  disperse.  He  pointed  out  that  the  seizure 
of  food  without  payment  would  inevitably  bring  famine 
on  the  city.  "You  say  you  are  hungry  and  have  no  money,' ' 
he  went  on.  "Here  is  all  I  have;  it  is  not  much,  but  take 
it."  He  threw  his  money  in  the  crowd.  "We  do  not  desire 
to  injure  any  one,  but  this  lawlessness  must  stop.  I  will 
give  you  five  minutes  to  disperse;  otherwise  you  will  be 
fired  on."  1 

His  few  words  had  their  effect,  and  the  rather  feeble  riot 
came  to  an  end.  Yet  the  incident  was  ominous,  for  it 
revealed  the  extent  of  the  suffering  among  the  poor  and  the 
refugees.  It  was  a  symptom  of  the  dissatisfaction  that  was 
now  as  widespread  as  the  boundaries  of  the  Confederacy. 

As  the  year  1863  wore  on,  the  opposition  to  the  national 

1 A  Memoir,  2,  375. 


DOWNHILL  241 

government  steadily  grew  and  it  continued  until  the  end  of 
the  war.  The  North  Carolina  supreme  court  defied  the 
Confederate  act  suspending  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  grant- 
ing writs  as  it  saw  fit.1  The  courts  of  Georgia  and  of  other 
states  acted  in  the  same  way.  The  governor  of  Mississippi 
protested  against  the  impressment  of  slaves,  though  they 
were  impressed  to  keep  them  from  falling  into  the  hands  of 
the  enemy.  Governor  Smith  of  Virginia,  like  Vance  of 
North  Carolina,  granted  many  exemptions  from  military 
service.  Governor  Allen  of  Louisiana  made  trouble  because 
Davis  ordered  the  disbandment  of  the  state  battalion  of  home 
troops.  Governor  Brown  of  Georgia  lay  awake  o'  nights 
thinking  up  projects  for  the  embarrassment  of  the  Presi- 
dent. Everywhere  there  was  a  want  of  cooperation  on  the 
part  of  the  state  authorities  with  the  national  government. 
Localism  was  rending  the  country. 

In  the  cases  of  Governor  Vance  of  North  Carolina  and 
Governor  Brown  of  Georgia,  the  resistance  to  the  Con- 
federate authorities  was  outspoken.  It  must  be  said,  in 
justice,  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  in  the  right  in  these  un- 
fortunate controversies.  Brown  was  forever  denying  the 
demands  of  the  government.  At  the  last  of  1863,  Vance 
urged  Davis  to  open  peace  negotiations.  Davis  replied, 
with  entire  truth,  that  he  could  not  treat  for  peace  with 
Washington  on  any  other  basis  than  surrender,  that  Wash- 
ington would  listen  to  nothing  else.  Later  Vance  requested 
that  the  habeas  corpus  be  not  suspended,  at  the  same  time 
alleging  that  the  government  was  unfair  to  former  anti- 
secessionists.  The  charge  was  false,  and  Davis  made  a 
crushing  retort  in  which  he  put  the  North  Carolina  gov- 
ernor entirely  in  the  wrong.    Though  the  victory  was  his, 

1  J.  E.  Schwab,  The  Confederate  States  of  America,  190. 


242  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  only  thing  the  President  accomplished  in  this  acri- 
monious controversy  was  to  strengthen  the  unreasonable 
Vance  in  his  prejudice  against  the  government.  Jefferson 
Davis  was  wholly  unable  to  win  over  an  adversary:  he  knew 
nothing  of  the  art  of  conciliation. 

The  states'  rights  opposition  to  the  Confederate  govern- 
ment inevitably  raised  against  Davis  the  charge  of  uncon- 
stitutionality, which  was  continually  urged  from  1862  until 
the  end  of  the  war.  According  to  his  opponents,  the  Presi- 
dent was  an  habitual  violator  of  the  constitution,  hardened 
in  trampling  on  the  states.  It  was  quite  natural  for  con- 
temporaries to  make  this  charge,  for  states'  rights  were  the 
ostensible  justification  for  secession,  the  pet  phrase  in  every 
mouth.  The  strange  thing  is  that  the  reproach  has  modern 
echoers.  Writers  to-day  sometimes  criticize  Jefferson  Davis 
for  the  centralizing  tendencies  of  his  administration. 

What  would  they  have,  these  critics  of  a  man  who  sought 
to  save  his  country  in  the  only  possible  way?  Do  they 
imagine  that  a  government  can  pause  in  the  midst  of  a 
struggle  for  existence  to  make  sure  that  none  of  its  laws 
infringe  strict  construction  interpretations  of  the  constitu- 
tion? The  charge  is  unjust.  The  fact  is  that  Jefferson 
Davis  was  as  true  to  strict  construction  and  states'  rights 
as  it  was  possible  for  a  man  in  his  position  to  be.  But 
it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  regard  the  South  as  a  con- 
federacy of  sovereign  states.  The  South  was  a  nation  fight- 
ing for  independence,  and  the  leading  lower  South  politicians, 
with  the  exception  of  Stephens,  looked  on  it  as  a  nation 
rather  than  as  a  league.  The  politicians  of  the  border  states 
were  the  great  sticklers  for  strict  construction,  for  they 
were  real  doctrinaires.  Jefferson  Davis  himself  might  have 
remained  a  doctrinaire  if  he  had  been  out  of  office,  but 


DOWNHILL  243 

practical  considerations  he  could  not  ignore  made  him  a 
nationalist. 

The  reasons  for  the  attack  on  Davis  were  not  theoretical, 
not  political.  They  were  practical.  By  1862,  the  war  was 
crushing  the  states  and  they  wished  relief.  They  wished 
to  carry  on  the  war  as  the  Revolutionary  War  had  been 
conducted — to  have  the  national  government  assign  quotas 
of  troops  and  supplies  to  the  various  commonwealths,  leav- 
ing fulfillment  entirely  with  the  latter.  If  the  Confederate 
government  had  done  so,  its  existence  would  have  termi- 
nated by  the  autumn  of  1862,  for  the  states  would  not  have 
acted  with  the  necessary  energy.  Only  by  national  action 
was  it  possible  to  secure  the  thousands  of  recruits  needed 
and  needed  at  once.  Consequently,  Davis  wisely  forced 
the  draft  on  a  reluctant  Congress.  The  draft  was  at  once 
denounced  as  unconstitutional,  as  were  other  measures — 
the  Impressment  Act,  the  Tax  in  Kind  of  1863  and  the  sus- 
pension of  the  habeas  corpus. 

The  first  of  these  laws  authorized  commissaries  to  seize 
provisions  wherever  they  might  be  found  on  the  payment 
of  a  nominal  price.  The  Tax  in  Kind  was  a  tithe  on  farm 
products  and  was  probably  necessary  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
the  troops  were  starving.  The  suspension  of  the  habeas 
corpus,  always  for  a  limited  period,  enabled  the  government 
to  defeat  the  efforts  of  the  state  courts  to  thwart  con- 
scription. Drastic  as  were  these  acts,  they  were  seemingly 
unavoidable:  war  cannot  be  made  without  soldiers  and  food. 

Jefferson  Davis,  however,  might  have  anticipated  criticism 
of  nationalist  measures  in  a  country  of  doctrinaires,  for  the 
South  suffered  from  constitutional  hypochondria.  Davis 
himself  had  once  been  much  of  a  doctrinaire.  In  only  one 
way  could  opposition  have  been  softened,  and  that  was  by 


244  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

personal  influence.  Anything  can  be  obtained  from  the 
Southern  people  by  personal  influence,  and  the  South  would 
have  troubled  little  over  the  "autocracy"  of  Jefferson  Davis 
if  he  had  been  genuinely  popular,  if  he  had  known  how 
to  woo  the  populace. 

He  did  not  woo  the  people ;  probably  he  could  not.  Tight 
in  his  shell,  he  issued  orders  to  Congress  instead  of  be- 
guiling it  with  the  hospitality  he  could  dispense  on  occa- 
sions, and  he  made  no  effort  to  justify  his  acts  to  the 
country.  It  was  his  aloofness,  more  than  his  centralizing 
methods,  that  alienated  the  South.  He  came  to  be  looked 
on  and  disliked  as  a  haughty  dictator  when  he  was,  in  reality, 
only  a  shy,  sensitive  egoist.  It  was  this  shyness,  this 
scholar's  instinctive  love  of  seclusion,  that  kept  him  day 
after  day  poring  over  the  papers  in  his  office  instead  of 
going  out  and  grappling  the  people  to  him.  This  was  his 
true  failure:  he  could  not  fire  the  imagination  of  the  masses, 
make  himself  a  real  national  leader.  He  was  the  monk  in 
a  cell  rather  than  the  preacher  of  a  crusade. 

The  political  situation  began  to  be  alarming  in  the  late 
summer  of  1863,  after  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg.  The 
people  were  greatly  depressed  by  failure  in  both  the  Eastern 
and  Western  fields  after  the  promise  of  the  spring.  Davis, 
reading  the  omens  aright,  saw  that  something  must  be  done 
to  remedy  the  situation.  Something  had  to  be  gained  to 
compensate  for  the  losses  of  the  summer.  Lee  wished 
to  attack  Meade,  but  he  had  had  his  chance ;  under  the  cir- 
cumstances another  invasion  of  the  North  was  unthinkable 
and  little  would  be  gained  by  merely  driving  Meade  back 
on  Washington.    The  South  needed  a  more  fruitful  victory. 

Looking  over  the  ground,  Davis  and  Seddon  decided  to 
try  the  other  front.    They  decided  to  concentrate  against 


DOWNHILL  245 

Rosecrans  and  attempt  to  drive  him  out  of  Tennessee. 
The  redemption  of  that  state  would  go  far  toward  neutraliz- 
ing the  effect  of  the  fall  of  Vicksburg;  it  would  reanimate 
the  South.  Unfortunately,  the  President  and  Secretary  of 
War  did  not  give  serious  consideration  to  the  question  of 
the  capacity  of  the  commander  of  the  army  of  Tennessee 
to  carry  out  an  offensive  campaign.  Yet  they  must  have  had 
a  certain  distrust  of  Bragg,  for  they  resolved  to  send  Long- 
street  to  him  with  a  part  of  his  corps.  Longstreet  advised 
this  move,  and  he  was  the  leading  officer  in  the  East  after 
Lee.  Gettysburg  had  not  much  hurt  his  reputation.  Davis 
and  Seddon  calculated  that  Longstreet  would  strengthen 
Bragg  sufficiently  to  enable  him  to  win  a  victory,  and  in 
this  estimate  they  were  right.  They  did  not  foresee  that 
Bragg  would  throw  away  the  victory  when  won.  They 
also  thought  that  Lee  could  hold  Meade  in  check  without 
Longstreet.  Again  they  were  right:  a  daring  and  important 
strategic  movement  was  carried  out  without  disaster  to 
the  East.  Thus  late  in  the  war,  and  on  a  limited  scale,  the 
Confederates  devised  and  attempted  the  proper  strategy. 
If  essayed  earlier,  with  attention  to  transportation,  it 
might  have  proved  decisive. 

The  West  was  in  urgent  need  of  help.  Unless  the  war 
was  to  be  fought  on  the  theory  that  Virginia  was  the  only 
theater  of  importance,  something  had  to  be  done  to  rescue 
the  trans- Alleghany  section.  The  Confederate  cause  in  the 
West  had  resembled  a  burst  bladder  since  the  fall  of  Vicks- 
burg. The  trans-Mississippi,  now  cut  off,  lapsed  into  a  sep- 
arate existence,  while  to  the  east  of  the  great  river  Tennessee 
was  lost,  Mississippi  was  half  lost  and  Alabama  and  Georgia 
were  in  danger.  Halleck  and  Grant  had  accomplished 
great  things. 


246  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Bragg,  at  Chattanooga,  had  been  neutralized  for  months 
by  a  somewhat  larger  army  under  Rosecrans.  In  August, 
1863,  Adjutant-General  Cooper  at  Richmond  suggested  to 
Bragg  that  he  advance.  Bragg  took  this  as  a  hint  from 
the  President,  who  had  sent  him  troops  from  Mississippi 
and  was  preparing  to  send  him  forces  from  Virginia.  Hes- 
itating for  some  weeks  longer,  he  finally  decided  to  take 
the  offensive  just  before  Longstreet  arrived  to  his  aid.  He 
lost  many  excellent  opportunities  to  strike  Rosecrans  in  de- 
tail and  eventually  attacked  the  Union  army  when  it  was 
fully  concentrated  in  a  strong  position.  Longstreet  had  but 
arrived  with  a  part  of  his  corps.  The  newcomer  from  the 
East,  accustomed  to  criticize  even  Lee,  was  dumbfounded 
by  Bragg's  methods.  He  thus  characterized  them:  "To  wait 
till  all  good  opportunities  had  passed,  and  then,  in  des- 
peration, to  seize  upon  the  least  favorable  one."  1  This 
is  a  harsh  but  not  untruthful  criticism  of  Bragg's  strategy: 
he  seldom  fought  a  battle  except  under  every  possible  dis- 
advantage, as  if  wishful  to  see  what  prodigies  of  valor 
his  men  might  accomplish.  In  the  West,  the  generalship 
was  on  the  Union  side,  and  that  is  mainly  why  the  Union 
won. 

The  control  of  Bragg's  army  at  Chickamauga  was  actually 
in  Longstreet's  hands,  since  Bragg  was  in  the  rear,  and 
Longstreet  was  a  tactician  of  great  ability.  For  once  the 
Southern  troops  in  the  West  were  skillfully  directed.  The 
result  was  impressive — a  sufficient  answer  to  those  who 
suppose  that  the  Western  troops  of  the  Confederacy  were 
not  as  good  as  the  Eastern.  The  Confederates  simply  drove 
the  Unionists  before  them  with  irresistible  fury,  all  but  a 
fragment  under  Thomas,  which  held  out  behind  heavy  en- 

aO.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  560. 


DOWNHILL  247 

trenchments  until  night.  Then,  Thomas,  too,  retreated  into 
Chattanooga. 

Chickamauga  was  the  most  remarkable  victory  gained  in 
the  whole  war.  It  was  won  by  an  ill-jointed  force,  which 
had  been  so  mishandled  as  to  lose  all  confidence  in  its  com- 
mander, over  a  well-disciplined  and  better-equipped  Union 
army  holding  a  fortified  position  and  led  by  a  good  sol- 
dier. It  was  a  triumph  due  to  the  desperation  of  valor  and 
to  Longstreet's  admirable  tactics. 

Bragg,  however,  whose  nerves  had  completely  broken 
down  under  the  strain,  did  nothing  to  follow  up  the  vic- 
tory, though  Rosecrans  was  shut  up  in  Chattanooga  with- 
out provisions  and  in  great  peril.  Longstreet  now  made  no 
secret  of  his  contempt  for  Bragg,  who  let  day  after  day 
go  by  without  acting.  Bragg  was  at  open  feud  with  his  gen- 
erals. He  resorted  to  his  old  habit,  accusing  his  subordi- 
nates of  misconduct  in  the  battle.  He  declared  that  if  his 
orders  had  been  obeyed  Rosecrans  would  have  been  de- 
stroyed. This  tendency  of  Bragg's  illustrates  his  funda- 
mental weakness  as  a  soldier.  He  seems  to  have  thought 
that  a  battle  can  be  arranged  with  the  precision  of  a  peace 
maneuver.  Before  an  engagement  he  gave  his  orders  to  the 
corps  commanders  and  then  did  nothing  more  until  it  was 
over.  He  made  no  effort  to  see  that  his  orders  were  car- 
ried out.  Instead,  he  was  always  far  from  the  firing  line, 
not  from  fear  but  from  nervous  collapse  due  to  responsibility. 
When  things  went  wrong,  and  things  invariably  went  wrong, 
he  relieved  his  feelings  by  denouncing  his  generals. 

After  Chickamauga,  Bragg  suspended  Polk,  whom  he 
particularly  disliked,  and  D.  H.  Hill  from  their  commands. 
He  proposed  to  place  Polk  under  arrest  and  try  him  by 
court  martial.     Davis,  however,  at  once  quashed  this,  for 


248  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Polk  was  a  popular  officer  much  respected  throughout  the 
West.  The  President  was  depressed  by  the  situation  in 
Bragg's  army,  at  the  friction  between  the  commander  and 
his  subordinates  and  his  widespread  and  growing  unpopu- 
larity. "The  opposition  to  you,  both  in  the  army  and  out 
of  it,  has  been  a  public  calamity,"  Davis  wrote  him,  "in  so 
far  that  it  impairs  your  capacity  for  usefulness.  I  had  hoped 
that  the  great  victory  which  you  have  recently  achieved 
would  tend  to  harmonize  the  army  and  bring  to  you  a  more 
just  appreciation  of  the  country."  x 

Nothing  was  done  with  Polk,  but  D.  H.  Hill  received  stern 
treatment.  This  able  division  general  who  had  served  under 
Lee  was  demoted  and  sent  East.  Apparently  he  had  taken 
the  lead  in  a  plot  of  Bragg's  generals  to  get  rid  of  the 
commander.  Rendered  desperate  by  his  incapacity,  they 
had  made  what  was,  in  reality,  a  patriotic  effort  to  save  the 
army.  They  knew  that  Bragg  was  Davis's  favorite  and  that 
they  had  everything  to  lose  by  incurring  his  enmity.  Long- 
street  had  lent  them  aid  and  encouragement,  but  Bragg 
seems  to  have  been  afraid  to  strike  at  the  famous  corps 
general.  The  latter  wrote  to  Seddon  after  Chickamauga, 
"I  am  convinced  that  nothing  but  the  hand  of  God  can  save 
us  or  help  us  as  long  as  we  have  our  present  commander. 
...  It  seems  that  he  cannot  adopt  or  adhere  to  any  plan 
or  course,  whether  of  his  own  or  some  one  else."  2  Indeed, 
Longstreet's  derision  of  his  superior  made  it  difficult  for  the 
two  men  to  act  together  in  the  same  army. 

Davis  felt  that  the  situation  was  so  serious  as  to  require 
his  personal  interposition.  Consequently,  he  went  West  for 
the  second  time,  reaching  Bragg's  camp  at  Missionary  Ridge 

iO.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  535. 
90.  R.,  Series  I,  30,  Part  IV,  706. 


DOWNHILL  249 

on  October  9.  He  remained  there  for  four  days.  Pember- 
ton  accompanied  him,  hoping  to  find  a  command,  but  gave 
up  the  idea  when  he  learned  of  the  hatred  with  which  the 
soldiers  regarded  him.1  Both  Davis  and  Bragg  would  have 
been  willing  to  entrust  Pemberton  with  a  corps,  but  they 
bowed  to  circumstances.  The  vanquished  general  still  held 
the  President's  confidence.  "Pemberton  is  everything  with 
Davis,  the  devout,"  wrote  an  officer;  "his  [Davis's]  intel- 
ligence is  only  equaled  by  his  self-sacrifice  in  regard  for 
others." 

Davis  had  several  confidential  interviews  with  Bragg. 
The  latter  offered  to  give  up  his  command,  but  declared 
that  if  he  remained  he  would  not  countenance  disobedience 
in  his  subordinates.  Davis,  who  seems  to  have  thought  that 
this  fustian  indicated  strength  of  character,  urged  him  to 
stay,  promising  full  support.  This  was  an  act  of  almost 
inexcusable  folly  on  the  President's  part,  for  he  was  aware 
of  the  army's  dissatisfaction  with  Bragg  and  of  the  almost 
mutinous  disposition  of  the  higher  officers.  Officers  and  men 
alike  might  have  been  wrong,  but  victory  could  hardly  be 
hoped  for  under  such  circumstances.  Yet  Davis  had  put 
out  of  his  mind  the  thought  of  removing  Bragg.  This  de- 
cision was  partly  due  to  the  difficulty  of  finding  any  one 
capable  of  commanding  the  army,  but  partly  also  to  the 
President's  rising  indignation  at  Bragg's  country-wide  un- 
popularity and  to  the  open  criticism  of  the  government  for 
retaining  him.  The  people  were  attempting  to  dictate  to 
the  President !  It  was  here  that  Davis's  doctrinaire  tendency 
revealed  itself.  The  leader  of  a  revolution,  absolutely  de- 
pendent on  the  good-will  of  the  people  and  the  faithfulness 
of  the  army,  he  yet  conducted  himself  with  something  of  the 

*0.  R.,  Series  I,  30,  Part  IV,  734. 


250  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

air  of  a  divine-right  ruler.    His  prerogatives  as  President 
were  not  to  be  encroached  upon,  forsooth! 

Davis's  course  was  infatuated.  He  might  have  put  Long- 
street  in  Bragg's  place  without  loss,  for  the  former  was  a 
far  better  officer  than  the  latter.  He  never  even  thought  of 
doing  this.  He  had  resolved  on  retaining  Bragg  at  any  cost. 
Why?  Less  than  a  year  before  he  had  been  willing  to  sac- 
rifice Bragg  for  the  good  of  the  service,  and  then  Johnston 
had  balked  the  scheme,  ardently  urged  by  Seddon.  Now 
he  was  risking  the  army,  the  war,  everything,  in  order  to 
keep  Bragg.  Why?  Because  the  country  was  demanding 
Bragg's  removal,  and  Davis  wished  to  teach  the  country 
that  it  could  not  give  him  orders.  But  more,  because  Bragg 
had  gained  a  greater  hold  on  him  than  any  other  man  had 
had.  The  great  defect  in  Jefferson  Davis's  character  was 
his  supersensitiveness,  his  craving  for  approval.  Bragg 
thoroughly  understood  this  weakness  and  played  on  it.  He 
never  opposed  Davis's  suggestions,  and  usually  followed 
them.  He  wrote  frequently  to  the  President  and  asked 
advice,  a  thing  the  President  loved  to  give.  He  even  flattered 
Davis  grossly,  but  to  his  liking.  Flattery  had  to  be  very, 
very  gross  to  fail  with  Jefferson  Davis.  The  summer  of  1863 
had  been  a  horrible  nightmare  to  the  President;  he  was 
depressed,  doubtful  of  himself.  Bragg  made  him  once  more 
confident  of  himself,  of  his  military  talent.  Bragg  was  the 
one  officer  in  high  place  who  did  not  jar  on  him,  who  was 
sympathetic.  Bragg  demanded  less  and  complained  less 
than  the  others,  for  even  Lee  had  become  somewhat 
querulous.  Is  it  to  be  so  much  wondered  at,  then,  that 
Jefferson  Davis  committed  the  fatal  mistake  of  keeping  in 
command  an  officer  whom  the  country  had  judged  and  found 
wanting? 


DOWNHILL  251 

Davis,  in  his  desire  to  retain  Bragg,  now  took  a  step  that 
led  to  irreparable  disaster.  It  was  evident  that  Longstreet 
and  Bragg  could  not  continue  together,  and  the  President 
suggested  to  the  commander  that  the  lieutenant  be  detached 
for  duty  in  east  Tennessee,  where  Knoxville  might  be  taken. 
Bragg  willingly  agreed,  because  he  was  glad  enough  to  get  rid 
of  Longstreet.  Longstreet  jumped  at  the  chance  of  having 
an  independent  command,  for  he  had  always  chafed  at  being 
a  subordinate.  Thus  the  astonishing  decision  was  reached  of 
dividing  the  small  army  of  Tennessee  at  the  very  moment 
that  the  Union  army  opposing  it  was  receiving  heavy  re- 
enforcements.  Many  have  wondered  at  the  wild  movement, 
not  understanding  that  it  was  owing  to  Davis's  wish  to 
keep  Bragg.  Only  by  sending  Longstreet  away  could  Bragg 
be  retained.     Otherwise,  there  was  danger  of  mutiny. 

The  President  returned  to  Richmond,  thinking  that  he 
had  straightened  the  tangle.  Longstreet,  Polk  and  Hill 
were  gone  or  going,  and  apparently  Bragg  could  manage 
to  get  on  with  the  other  generals.  In  reality,  everything 
was  much  worse  than  before.  The  country  was  enraged  at 
Bragg's  continuance  in  command,  and  the  matter  was  be- 
coming more  than  military;  it  was  growing  into  a  political 
issue.  What  was  more  ominous,  the  army  was  demoralized 
by  the  loss  of  the  able  corps  general  and  his  efficient  troops 
from  the  East.  The  army  thought  that  Longstreet's  de- 
tachment at  such  a  critical  moment  was  only  one  more 
illustration  of  Bragg's  generalship  and  its  discontent  quick- 
ened into  anger.  The  stage  was  rapidly  preparing  for  the 
greatest  tragedy  of  the  war. 

After  leaving  the  army,  Davis  went  to  Selma,  the  seat  of 
great  munitions  plants,  where  he  was  welcomed  by  a  throng. 
He  made  a  stirring  appeal,  warning  the  people  that  peace 


252  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

could  come  only  through  victory  and  that  it  was  useless 
to  look  to  Europe  for  aid.  The  way  to  end  the  war  was 
to  annihilate  Rosecrans.  Turning  eastward,  he  slowly  made 
his  way  to  Charleston,  speaking  at  many  places  and  showing 
a  cordiality  new  for  him.  In  fact,  he  was  making  an  effort 
to  hold  the  confidence  of  the  public,  which  the  disasters  of 
the  summer  had  sapped.  If  tried  earlier,  this  attempt  to 
woo  the  masses  would  have  been  most  wise,  and  it  might 
have  accomplished  something  even  now  if  it  had  been  ac- 
companied by  the  removal  of  Bragg.  But  it  was  useless 
to  seek  to  enlist  the  people's  support  for  a  military  policy 
universally  condemned:  Jefferson  Davis  could  not  set  his 
solitary  judgment  against  public  opinion  with  any  hope 
of  success.  If  Bragg  had  been  another  Marlborough  or 
Napoleon,  he  must  have  failed  on  account  of  his  intense 
unpopularity.  The  President  lingered  several  days  at 
Charleston,  trying  to  reanimate  the  South  Carolinians,  who, 
like  the  people  of  all  the  states,  were  profoundly  discouraged. 
He  returned  to  Richmond  without  having  accomplished 
anything  helpful  by  his  exhausting  journey.  He  had  really 
done  himself  more  harm  than  good,  for  his  enemies  had 
seized  the  occasion  to  spread  rumors  that  the  trip  was  pre- 
liminary to  a  dictatorship. 

So  far  as  military  affairs  went,  he  had  thrown  away  the 
last  chance  of  the  South  to  win.  Grant  arrived  at  Chat- 
tanooga and  took  command  of  the  Union  forces,  an  ominous 
event  for  the  unlucky  Bragg.  He  presently  moved  against 
the  Confederate  lines  on  Lookout  Mountain  and  Mission- 
ary Ridge.  There  could  be  no  question  of  the  outcome  of 
the  conflict.  A  superb  army  commanded  by  a  master  of 
war  confronted  a  disorganized  force  which  was  actually  at 
the  point  of  mutiny.    When  Longstreet  marched  away,  the 


DOWNHILL  253 

army  was  ruined.  His  prowess  partly  made  up  for  Bragg's 
incompetence.  The  soldiers,  now  left  with  their  hated 
and  despised  commander,  would  probably  have  deposed 
him  and  defied  the  government  if  no  engagement  had 
occurred. 

For  this  reason  the  Confederate  army  cannot  be  judged 
by  its  conduct  at  Missionary  Ridge.  The  position  was  very 
strong,  and  if  the  troops  had  fought  in  their  normal  way 
Grant  would  probably  have  been  repulsed  with  heavy  loss. 
But  it  was  a  peculiar  situation,  involving  much  more  than 
the  feeling  of  the  army  alone.  The  country  as  a  whole 
was  protesting  against  Bragg,  and  the  soldiers  knew  it;  they 
were  profoundly  affected  by  it.  When  Grant's  troops 
clambered  up  the  steep  slopes  of  Missionary  Ridge,  the 
Southerners,  refusing  to  fight  longer  under  their  detested 
leader,  abandoned  the  field,  except  on  one  wing,  where 
Cleburne,  who  was  in  command,  held  his  lines  and  re- 
pulsed the  Unionists.  Here  a  beloved  division  general 
kept  his  men  to  their  duty.  Bragg  was  greeted  with  cries 
and  jeers  by  his  fleeing  soldiers,  who  retired  into  Georgia. 
The  shattered  army  rallied  at  Dalton. 

The  victory  of  Missionary  Ridge  was  not  the  less  im- 
portant to  the  Union  that  it  was  easy.  Hitherto,  from 
Shiloh  to  Chickamauga,  the  Confederates  in  actual  conflict 
had  outfought  their  opponents.  At  Chickamauga,  they  had 
simply  driven  the  Unionists  from  the  field  by  the  fury 
of  their  onslaught.  But  now,  at  Chattanooga,  they  fled 
from  the  face  of  the  foe.  Their  morale  was  shaken,  and 
they  never  entirely  regained  it.  For  the  rest  of  the  war, 
the  Union  troops  in  the  West  were  definitely  better  than  the 
Confederate.  Grant  was,  indeed,  lucky  that  he  fought  the 
army  of  Tennessee  in  the  hour  of  its  demoralization,  but 


254  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

his  is  the  luck  that  usually  attends  genius.  The  same  luck 
played  its  part  at  Vicksburg — the  luck  of  audacity. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  to  blame  for  this  great  disaster  to 
the  South.  He  was  not,  primarily,  responsible  for  Gettys- 
burg and  Vicksburg.  But  for  Missionary  Ridge,  which, 
coming  on  top  of  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg,  settled  the  fate 
of  the  war,  he  was  responsible.  He  had  deliberately  closed 
his  eyes  to  the  intense  discontent  of  the  army  and  the  coun- 
try with  Braxton  Bragg,  keeping  that  officer  in  command  in 
spite  of  every  warning  and  at  all  costs.  The  bitter  dis- 
satisfaction of  all  the  subordinate  generals,  which  had  lasted 
for  more  than  a  year ;  the  almost  mutinous  conduct  of  Long- 
street  and  Hill;  Bragg's  constant  accusations  of  everybody 
—surely  these  things  should  have  shown  any  man  of  sound 
judgment  that  catastrophe  was  at  hand.  But  the  President 
had  ignored  the  omens.  And  now,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
war,  a  Southern  army  had  behaved  badly  in  the  face  of  the 
enemy.    Defeat  had  become  debacle. 

A  storm  of  criticism  swept  the  country.  The  people  had 
condemned  the  President  for  retaining  Bragg,  and  the  judg- 
ment of  the  people  seemed  confirmed  by  the  terrible  de- 
feat. Men  did  not  reflect  that  the  defeat  was  due  to  the 
public  mood  in  this  instance,  and  not  to  Bragg.  He  had 
been  beaten  before  a  gun  was  fired  at  Missionary  Ridge. 
All  that  they  knew  was  that  the  unpopular  general  had  been 
routed,  and  that  the  President  had  kept  the  unpopular  gen- 
eral in  command.  The  result  was  that  the  confidence  of 
the  Southern  people  in  Jefferson  Davis,  already  greatly  im- 
paired, was  completely  wrecked.  From  this  time  on  the 
country  was  really  in  opposition  to  the  government. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  brought  this  on  himself.  In  some 
ways  the  head  of  a  republic  wields  much  greater  power  than 


DOWNHILL  255 

a  king:  he  can  venture  on  more  extreme  and  arbitrary  action 
than  any  king;  he  can  override  the  constitution  at  will 
if  he  has  public  opinion  behind  him.  But  he  may  not  with- 
out great  danger  attempt  to  carry  out  his  legitimate  func- 
tions against  a  definite  popular  conception.  Davis,  of  course, 
had  the  right  to  make  and  retain  generals;  but  he  very 
stupidly  thought  that  he  could  exercise  this  right  in  de- 
fiance of  the  country.    Missionary  Ridge  points  the  moral. 

His  proper  course  was  clear:  he  should  have  transferred 
Bragg  after  the  battle  of  Chickamauga,  in  the  winning  of 
which  Bragg  had  really  no  part.  In  such  a  critical  moment 
as  the  autumn  of  1863,  he  should  have  courted  popularity 
by  every  means  in  his  power.  Instead  of  doing  this,  he 
committed  the  unpardonable  super-sin  of  supporting  the 
most  unpopular  soldier  in  the  country  after  Pemberton.  He 
may,  indeed,  have  been  right  in  thinking  that  Bragg  was 
an  abler  general  than  any  other  man  who  could  have  been 
put  in  his  place.  This  is  beside  the  question :  public  opinion 
had  condemned  Bragg,  and  Davis  was  dependent  on  public 
opinion  for  success.  There  was  absolutely  no  hope  for  the 
Confederacy  if  the  people,  who  had  to  bear  the  burdens  and 
make  the  sacrifices,  lost  faith  in  it. 

After  Missionary  Ridge,  the  dissatisfaction  and  depres- 
sion flowing  from  defeat  crystallized  into  the  personal  un- 
popularity of  Jefferson  Davis.  He  bore  the  blame  for  the 
whole  series  of  catastrophes  which  had  wrecked  Southern 
hopes  and  turned  victory  into  disaster.  People  did  not 
reflect  that  the  Pennsylvania  invasion  and  the  defeat  of 
Gettysburg  had  much  to  do  with  the  unhappy  situation;  in 
fact,  they  thought  little  of  Gettysburg.  Johnston's  failure 
to  do  anything  to  relieve  Pemberton  escaped  their  atten- 
tion entirely.    What  occupied  their  minds  at  the  close  of 


256  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

1863  was  the  remembrance  that  Jefferson  Davis  had  ap- 
pointed Pemberton  to  high  command  and  that  Vicksburg 
had  fallen,  with  an  army,  and  that  he  had  retained  Bragg 
and  Missionary  Ridge  had  followed.  He  was  looked  on  as 
the  ultimate  author  of  Southern  woes. 

Thus,  the  net  result  of  the  campaign  of  1863  was  the 
ruin  of  Davis's  prestige.  He  had  never  been  popular  with 
the  masses  because  he  was  dignified  and  austere.  He  had 
long  since  fallen  out  with  the  politicians  because  he  con- 
sidered them  too  little.  But  until  the  autumn  of  1863,  the 
Southern  people  looked  on  him  as  a  great  man.  Their  con- 
fidence, first  disturbed  by  the  invasions  of  1862,  had  more 
or  less  revived  with  the  victories  of  that  summer.  They  still 
trusted  Davis,  though  Lee  and  Jackson  overshadowed  him. 
They  gave  the  government  loyal  support,  making  great 
sacrifices  for  it.  Until  the  end  of  1863,  the  number  of 
malingerers,  except  in  a  few  mountain  districts,  was  sur- 
prisingly small;  in  many  sections  of  the  country  every  able- 
bodied  man  was  in  the  army.  But  in  1863  the  people, 
as  a  whole,  lost  confidence  in  the  government  and  never 
regained  it.  From  this  time,  desertion  grew  and  flourished; 
criticism  was  rife;  despair  replaced  hope.  The  shadow  of 
failure  lay  across  the  country — of  failure  due  no  less  to 
psychological  causes  than  to  physical.  The  people  did  not 
look  with  trust  and  love  to  the  head  of  the  nation. 

As  1863  closed,  Jefferson  Davis  had  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity to  moralize  on  the  immutable  fact  that  the  ruler  of 
a  country  must  bear  the  responsibility  for  failure,  no  matter 
where  lies  the  actual  fault.  He  had  not  committed  any 
great  errors  of  commission  in  the  disastrous  summer  that 
wrecked  the  Confederacy.  So  far  from  interfering  with  the 
commanders  in  the  field,  he  had  given  them  wide  discretion. 


DOWNHILL  257 

He  had  concurred  in  Lee's  invasion  of  the  North  against 
his  own  judgment — a  pledge  of  confidence  not  to  be  sur- 
passed. He  had  intrusted  Johnston  with  large  powers,  even 
if  Johnston  had  not  seen  fit  to  use  them.  That  was  not  the 
President's  fault.  It  is  true  that  he  had  kept  Bragg  in 
command,  but  he  had  done  so  partly  because  of  Johnston's 
support  of  that  officer.  In  spite  of  his  policy  of  noninter- 
ference with  the  generals,  which  had  called  for  great  self- 
control  and  even  a  measure  of  self-abnegation,  disaster 
had  been  the  portion  of  the  Southern  arms  both  in  the  East 
and  the  West.  The  cause  that  seemed  so  promising  in 
May  was  withered  in  November  like  the  flowers  of  May. 

The  catastrophe  had  not  occurred  through  any  positive 
fault  of  the  President's.  It  was  due  to  the  inability  of  the 
Confederate  leaders  to  read  their  problem  aright,  and  Davis's 
inability  in  this  respect  was  no  greater  than  that  of  the 
generals.  Disaster  came  because  of  two  things — divided 
command  and  lack  of  cooperation.  It  would  have  been  bet- 
ter, indeed,  for  Davis  to  have  kept  in  his  own  hands  the 
direction  of  all  the  armies  than  to  have  adopted  the  sys- 
tem actually  employed,  or  rather  the  want  of  system.  A 
mediocre  strategic  scheme  calling  for  the  cooperation  of 
all  the  armies  and  directed  by  a  single  mind  would  have 
been  superior  to  the  isolated  movements  of  the  armies  in 
1863  under  several  commanders.  Lee  and  Johnston  might 
have  conducted  campaigns  in  different  continents  so  far 
as  any  common  action  was  concerned;  they  do  not  seem 
to  have  dreamed  of  coordination.  Seddon  did,  but  he  was 
overruled.  The  result  of  the  control  of  several  men  was 
that  the  South  in  1863  was,  actually  invading  the  enemy's 
country  in  the  East  while  unable  to  defend  itself  in  the 
West. 


258  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Jefferson  Davis,  who  understood  the  strategic  situation 
pretty  well,  made  the  mistake  of  allowing  himself  to  be 
persuaded  by  Lee  into  invading  Pennsylvania.  Lee's  au- 
dacity here  ran  away  with  him  because  Lee  was  not  think- 
ing of  the  West;  he  was  a  general  who  never  remained  on 
the  defensive  except  by  the  exercise  of  great  self-control. 
His  strategy  was  essentially  the  offensive-defensive.  Davis 
had  interfered  with  Lee's  plans  at  the  time  of  the  battle 
of  Fredericksburg,  but  he  now  let  Lee  have  his  way  under 
infinitely  graver  circumstances.  Yet  he  could  not  indorse 
the  invasion  of  the  North  heartily,  and  his  lukewarmness 
had  important  consequences. 

When  Davis,  at  the  cabinet  meeting  in  May,  finally  de- 
cided to  send  Lee  across  the  Potomac,  thus  definitely  taking 
the  offensive,  he  should  have  made  a  decision  without  res- 
ervations. He  should  have  counted  the  cost  of  the  offensive 
and  bent  every  nerve  to  make  the  new  strategic  policy  suc- 
cessful. Vicksburg  should  have  been  counted  lost  and 
the  whole  country  should  have  been  stripped  of  troops  in 
order  to  give  Lee  a  large  army.  When  the  weaker  side 
takes  the  offensive,  it  should  strike  with  its  utmost  strength 
because  it  must  act  quickly.  Lee's  army  was  far  too  small 
for  invasion;  if  he  had  declined  battle  at  Gettysburg,  as 
Longstreet  urged,  he  would  soon  have  been  hopelessly  out- 
numbered and  forced  to  retreat.  Lee  knew  that  perfectly 
well,  and  that  is  why  he  fought  at  Gettysburg. 

Jefferson  Davis,  however,  was  essentially  a  defensive  sol- 
dier: he  was  naturally  overcautious.  He  could  not  bring 
himself  to  put  all  of  his  eggs  in  one  basket.  Consequently 
he  let  Lee  go  to  Pennsylvania  with  an  insufficient  force, 
hoping  to  be  able  to  maintain  the  defense  in  the  rest  of  the 
country  while  taking  the  offensive  in  the  Northeast.    Com- 


DOWNHILL  259 

bining  his  old  defensive  system  with  the  new  offensive,  he 
still  kept  garrisons  and  forces  at  various  points  instead  of 
giving  Lee  everything.  Charleston  and  Mobile  should  have 
been  stripped,  and  Lee  should  have  had  100,000  men  in- 
stead of  65,000.  With  the  larger  force,  Lee  would  either 
have  refused  to  fight  at  Gettysburg  or  would  have  over- 
whelmed Meade  by  weight  of  numbers.  He  would  not  have 
been  forced  to  fight  immediately  and  at  a  disadvantage, 
the  penalty  of  his  numerical  weakness.  And,  again,  if 
he  had  won  at  Gettysburg,  the  victory  would  probably 
have  been  decisive.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  had  met  de- 
feat at  the  head  of  a  larger  army,  the  war  would  have 
ended  sooner.  But  the  end  would  have  been  only  what  it 
was  anyway,  after  a  longer  period.  Since  the  terrible  risks 
of  the  offensive  were  taken,  they  should  have  been  accepted 
in  entirety.  An  effort  should  have  been  made  to  capture 
Washington  and  end  the  war  at  a  blow.  But  Davis  would 
not  do  this. 

Davis's  cardinal  error  was  in  accepting  Lee's  plan  with- 
out a  conviction  of  its  value.  He  would  have  done  much  bet- 
ter not  to  sanction  it.  He  would  have  done  better  to  remain 
on  the  defensive  in  the  East  and  to  shift  Longstreet  to  the 
West — in  case  Lee  could  not  have  been  induced  to  go — in 
May,  1863,  instead  of  in  September.  Nothing  decisive 
would  probably  have  occurred;  but  if  Lee  were  not 
weakened  too  much  he  would  have  been  able  to  conduct 
a  campaign  in  Virginia  while  Bragg  and  Longstreet 
attacked  Rosecrans  or  Johnston  and  Longstreet  rescued 
Pemberton.  Vicksburg  would  have  fallen,  but  without 
great  loss.  Such  a  campaign,  of  course,  would  have  been 
a  small  affair  in  comparison  with  a  general  concentra- 
tion of  the  Southern  forces  under  Lee  against  Grant;  but 


260  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

it  would  have  minimized  the  loss  and  made  recovery 
possible. 

As  it  was,  Davis  allowed  Lee  to  dictate  the  strategy  in 
the  East  while  the  great  general  did  not  have  the  order- 
ing of  the  forces  elsewhere  to  make  the  strategy  effective. 
Control  was  divided  between  Davis  and  Lee,  when  either 
one  or  the  other  should  have  been  in  supreme  command. 
If  Davis  had  directed  the  war  according  to  his  own  ideas, 
Pennsylvania  would  not  have  been  invaded.  If  Lee  had 
been  commander  in  chief,  he  would  have  strengthened  his 
army  sufficiently  to  increase  the  chance  of  success  in  the 
invasion.  But  neither  Davis  nor  Lee  ordered  things  wholly, 
and  so  the  offensive  was  undertaken  without  sufficient  means 
for  decisive  victory.  Thus  the  insufficient  and  ill-timed 
offensive  in  the  East  and  the  insufficient  and  badly-handled 
defensive  in  the  West  ended  in  a  coincident  disaster  that 
brought  on  the  downfall  of  the  Confederacy,  which,  at  the 
time  of  the  battle  of  Chancellorsville,  seemed  on  the  way  to 
victory.  Divided  command  and  lack  of  cooperation  did 
their  accustomed  work. 

Missionary  Ridge  did  not  immediately  unseat  Bragg.  The 
discredited  commander,  after  his  retreat  to  Dalton,  actually 
seems  to  have  thought  that  he  could  wheedle  Davis  into 
continuing  him  at  the  head  of  the  army.  "Let  us  concen- 
trate our  available  men,"  he  wrote  the  President,  "unite 
them  with  this  gallant  little  army  .  .  .  and  with  our  great- 
est and  best  leader  at  the  head,  yourself,  if  practicable, 
march  the  whole  upon  the  enemy  and  crush  him  in  his  power 
and  glory."  1 

But  Davis,  partial  as  he  was  to  Bragg,  knew  that  the  lat- 
ter had  to  go.    The  matter  was  brought  up  in  the  cabinet, 

xO.  R.t  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  567. 


DOWNHILL  261 

which,  for  once  ignoring  the  President's  predilections,  voted 
for  Bragg's  removal.1  The  general  relieved  an  unpleasant 
situation  by  tending  his  resignation,  which  was  immediately 
accepted.    Thus  Jefferson  Davis  bowed  to  the  inevitable. 

He  managed,  however,  to  make  the  sacrifice  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  outrage  public  sentiment  afresh.  His  pride 
was  fully  aroused  by  now  and  he  was  beginning  to  show 
that  fatal  obstinacy  for  which  he  has  been  too  widely  famed, 
for  earlier  in  the  war  it  did  not  appear.  He  was  resolved 
that  Bragg  should  not  be  disgraced  in  his  removal.  Con- 
sequently, the  general  was  ordered  to  Richmond  and  made 
military  adviser,  the  post  which  Lee  had  held  in  1862.  The 
country  knew  what  this  meant,  that  Bragg  would  enjoy 
the  President's  favor  more  than  ever,  even  if  he  could 
not  command  an  army.  He  would  have  great  weight  in 
dictating  the  military  policy.  At  once,  Davis's  enemies  were 
up  in  arms,  so  that  any  benefit  that  might  have  accrued  from 
Bragg's  removal  was  lost.  The  Richmond  Examiner,  which 
now  assailed  the  administration  continually,  sarcastically 
voiced  the  current  opinion  of  Bragg's  new  appointment: 
"From  Lookout  Mountain,  a  step  to  the  highest  honor  and 
power  is  natural  and  inevitable."  There  was  much  truth 
in  the  bitter  jest:  Bragg  was,  indeed,  to  have  much  power 
in  the  events  that  preceded  the  downfall  of  the  Confederacy. 

Davis's  fondness  for  Bragg  has  been  often  mentioned  in 
connection  with  his  extreme  partiality  for  West  Pointers. 
He  has  been  blamed  too  much  in  this  latter  particular.  It 
should  be  noted  that  nearly  all  of  the  officers  of  great  dis- 
tinction on  both  sides  were  graduates  of  West  Point.  Hal- 
leck,  Grant,  Sherman,  McClellan,  Meade,  Hooker,  Buell, 
Rosecrans,  Thomas,  Sheridan,  Hancock,  Warren — all  were 

1  Jones,  2,  106. 


262  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

West  Pointers.  More  nongraduates  rose  to  fame  in  the 
Confederate  service  than  in  the  Union.  Likewise,  many  in- 
competent West  Pointers  were  appointed  to  high  command 
on  both  sides.  When  the  war  ended,  the  unprofessional  sol- 
diers in  the  Confederate  armies  were  rapidly  pushing  to  the 
front  and  they  would  largely  have  superseded  the  West 
Pointers  if  the  war  had  lasted  two  years  longer. 

Jefferson  Davis's  preference  for  trained  men  was  per- 
fectly right.  He  appointed  a  few  politicians  to  high  rank, 
and  nearly  all  of  them  disappointed  him.  The  successes  of 
the  Southern  forces  were  largely  due  to  the  professional  sol- 
diers who  commanded  them.  Yet  it  would  have  been  far 
better  if  Davis  had  recognized  the  fact  that  training  is  much 
less  important  in  the  case  of  soldiers  than  aptitude  for 
war:  soldiers  are  always  born,  never  made.  The  number 
of  first-rate  West  Pointers  in  the  Southern  service  was 
small:  one  reason  why  Bragg  was  kept  was  that  soldiers 
capable  of  commanding  armies  were  so  few.  But  Jefferson 
Davis  did  not  look  far  enough  for  talent.  After  two  years 
of  bitter  fighting,  a  number  of  officers,  developed  in  the 
school  of  actual  war,  were  coming  to  the  front.  Such  men 
as  Forrest,  Cleburne  and  Walthall  were  forcing  recognition 
by  their  feats  of  arms;  they  were  practical  soldiers  of  great 
ability,  and  Forrest  has  never  been  surpassed  as  a  cavalry 
general.  Davis  did  promote  these  officers  to  important 
places,  but  he  seems  to  have  thought  that  no  one  but  a 
West  Point  graduate  was  fit  to  command  an  army.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  either  Forrest  or  Cleburne  was  much  fitter 
to  head  an  army  than  Bragg  for  the  one  reason,  if  no 
other,  that  they  were  strong  and  resolute  men  while  Brag:] 
was  weak  and  hesitating.  It  is  a  pity  that  the  President 
did  not  rise  above  professional  prejudice  and  advance  these 


DOWNHILL  263 

excellent  soldiers  to  still  higher  posts.  The  service  would 
have  gained  by  their  elevation.  But  he  continued  to  reserve 
army  leadership  for  professional  soldiers,  with  disastrous 
consequences. 

On  Bragg's  removal,  the  command  of  the  army  of  Tennes- 
see passed  automatically  to  Hardee,  the  senior  corps  com- 
mander. Hardee  was  a  good  though  not  brilliant  soldier 
who  shrank  from  responsibility.  He  requested  to  be  re- 
lieved, and  Johnston  was  asked  to  take  the  position. 
Beauregard  had  been  once  more  considered  and  again  passed 
over.  This  time  Johnston  consented.  He  was  highly  popu- 
lar with  officers  and  men,  and  his  appointment  was  hailed 
with  delight. 

Davis  gave  Johnston  the  command  only  with  great  re- 
luctance, for  he  had  completely  lost  confidence  in  that  officer 
in  the  Vicksburg  campaign.  He  had  attempted  to  induce 
Lee  to  go  West  and  temporarily  take  charge  of  the  battered 
army  of  Tennessee.1  The  idea  was  a  good  one,  for  Lee's 
presence  in  the  West  at  the  beginning  of  1864  would  have 
been  most  inspiring.  Lee,  however,  who  had  no  wish  to 
enlarge  the  circle  of  his  already  great  duties,  refused  with 
a  touch  of  asperity.  Absorbed  continually  with  the  press- 
ing problem  of  finding  food  for  his  own  army,  he  expected 
the  government  to  look  out  for  the  other  forces.  The  gov- 
ernment was  no  longer  able  to  do  this,  as  Davis  practically 
admitted  when  he  appealed  to  Lee.  It  was  a  very  significant 
move  on  his  part.  It  shows  that  he  was  willing  for  Lee 
to  become  commander  in  chief  in  fact  if  not  in  name.  The 
pity  is  that  he  sought  to  do  this  informally,  nominally 
remaining  commander  himself.  If  he  had  requested  Con- 
gress to  make  Lee  the  head  of  all  the  armies,  the  nation 

1  Lee's  Dispatches    (Freeman),    131. 


264  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

would  have  been  delighted.  But  Jefferson  Davis  would 
have  endured  anything  rather  than  confess  his  military  fail- 
ure and  his  abdication  of  war  direction.  Lee's  refusal  to  go 
West  left  him  no  alternative,  as  he  saw  it,  but  to  continue 
the  ordering  of  forces  for  whom  no  satisfactory  leader  could 
be  found.  Johnston  was  in  command  in  the  West,  but  the 
President  distrusted  him  and  Bragg  had  come  to  hate  him. 
Again  the  stage  was  set  for  tragedy. 

Johnston  and  Davis  had  now  nearly  reached  the  status  of 
personal  enemies.  The  fault  was  at  least  as  much  Johnston's 
as  Davis's.  Johnston  had  been  worse  than  tactless;  he 
had  openly  and  harshly  criticized  the  President,  putting 
all  the  blame  for  the  Western  disaster  of  1863  on  him.  He 
himself,  of  course,  was  not  at  all  culpable.  Recrimination 
was  the  foremost  Confederate  habit.  Davis  felt  the  in- 
justice of  being  saddled  with  the  responsibility  for  the  fall 
of  Vicksburg,  the  more  that  the  country  sided  with  John- 
ston because  Johnston  was  popular  and  Davis  unpopular. 
Lee,  in  his  magnificent  magnanimity,  had  assumed  the  full 
blame  of  Gettysburg;  his  report  spoke  only  of  the  glorious 
deeds  of  his  men.  But  such  an  example  is  hard  to  follow, 
and  the  Confederate  generals,  harassed  by  failure,  were 
merely  human  in  giving  way  to  the  desire  to  shift  the  blame 
to  others.  The  hostility  between  Davis  and  Johnston,  which 
later  involved  Bragg,  assumed  political  importance  as  well 
as  military  significance:  it  was,  in  reality,  the  issue  in  poli- 
tics in  1864.  It  led  to  the  broadening  of  the  division  be- 
tween President  and  nation  which  had  arisen  at  the  time 
of  the  battle  of  Chickamauga,  and  it  resulted  in  the  fall  of 
the  Confederacy  at  an  earlier  date  than  would  otherwise 
have  been  the  case.  In  the  end,  the  nation  repudiated  the 
President. 


DOWNHILL  265 

The  political  storm  which  broke  as  soon  as  it  was  known 
that  Missionary  Ridge  was  a  great  disaster  and  which  was 
reflected  by  the  cabinet  vote  for  the  removal  of  Bragg  took 
on  larger  proportions  when  Congress  met,  on  December  7, 
1863.  It  assembled  under  the  most  disheartening  circum- 
stances. The  members  came  to  Richmond  from  a  country 
depressed  and  malcontent  in  every  section.  Some  of  them 
belonged  to  territory  already  occupied  by  the  Union  troops 
and  lost  to  the  South.  With  but  few  exceptions,  they  came 
with  feelings  of  savage  animosity  against  the  administration, 
which  they  blamed  for  the  disasters  of  the  year.  They  came 
prepared  to  attack  the  executive  in  any  way  short  of  an 
actual  breach  between  the  legislative  and  executive  branches. 
They  found  themselves  in  a  crowded  city  of  starving  refu- 
gees— despondency,  poverty,  despair  on  every  side. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  never  commanded  the  affection  of 
Congress;  he  had  never  even  had  the  confidence  of  the 
Senate.  He  had  expended  little  time  in  winning  the  poli- 
ticians to  his  side.  He  issued  his  orders  and  he  so  overawed 
Congress  that  his  orders  had  been  obeyed,  though  not  with- 
out much  bickering.  His  power  over  the  congressmen  was 
that  of  a  strong  nature  over  average  men.  To  continue 
such  an  influence,  however,  the  continuance  of  success  was 
necessary;  for,  in  the  absence  of  personal  popularity  or 
of  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  political  machine,  built  on 
the  use  of  patronage,  a  revolt  was  certain  in  the  event  of 
misfortune.  Congress  reflected  public  opinion:  in  1861 
and  1862,  it  had  felt  that  there  was  something  of  greatness 
about  Davis;  but  in  December,  1863,  after  Gettysburg, 
Vicksburg  and  Missionary  Ridge,  it  completely  ceased  to 
believe  in  him.    The  jackals  turned  on  the  sick  lion. 

The  attack  on  the  President  began  in  the  House  of  Rep- 


266  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

resentatives.  Henry  S.  Foote  of  Tennessee,  once  of  Mis- 
sissippi, whose  lifelong  antagonism  for  Jefferson  Davis 
reminds  one  of  Borgo's  hatred  of  Napoleon,  at  the  very  open- 
ing of  the  session  poured  out  a  scorching  denunciation  of  the 
head  of  the  government  as  the  fountain  of  the  country's 
woes.  He  declared  that  incompetent  men  in  high  military 
positions  had  led  to  defeat  and  would  lead  to  still  further 
disaster.  Since  Bragg  was  no  longer  in  a  definite  official 
position,  Foote  assailed  the  man  who,  next  to  Bragg,  was 
looked  on  as  the  especial  favorite — Commissary- General 
Northrop.  At  intervals  of  several  days,  Foote  continued 
his  attacks  until  the  President's  supporters  rallied  to  his 
defense. 

As  the  year  1863  closed,  with  Davis's  popularity  gone, 
he  realized  that  something  should  be  done  to  soothe  the 
people.  In  spite  of  all  his  labors  and  anxieties,  he  held  a 
public  reception  at  the  "White  House"  on  New  Year's  Day 
of  1864,  and  another  one  some  weeks  later.  At  these 
functions  he  marvelously  unbent.  His  cold  courtesy  was 
put  aside  for  a  warm  handshake  and  a  cordial,  "I  am  very 
glad  to  see  you  here  to-night."  He  even  talked  at  some 
length  with  quite  obscure  guests  and  charmed  every  one, 
for  he  could  be  pleasing  when  he  worked  himself  up  to  the 
point  of  throwing  off  his  habitual  nervous  depression. 

The  public  receptions  had  little  effect  on  Congress  or  even 
on  the  hungry  swarm  of  refugees  and  government  clerks. 
Foote  offered  a  resolution  calling  for  Northrop's  removal, 
and,  though  it  was  defeated,  the  audacious  proposal  showed 
how  the  President's  enemies  had  strengthened  since  the  last 
meeting  of  Congress. 

The  attitude  of  the  Senate  was  even  more  ominous,  for 
it  became  apparent  that  the  President  would  not  be  able  to 


DOWNHILL  267 

command  a  majority  in  that  body  much  longer.  On  Janu- 
ary 4,  the  Senate  passed  resolutions  complimenting  Lee. 
This  seems  innocent  enough  on  its  face,  for  such  resolu- 
tions were  passed  in  the  case  of  other  officers,  but  in  this 
particular  instance  the  resolutions  marked  the  first  move  in 
a  long  game  for  superseding  Davis  with  Lee.  The  President 
now  had  an  admirable  opportunity  to  confound  his  enemies 
and  critics,  who  looked  on  him  as  alone  responsible  for  the 
defeats  of  1863.  If  he  had  recommended  Congress  to  make 
Lee  commander  in  chief,  the  responsibility  for  the  further 
conduct  of  the  war  would  have  rested  with  the  great  gen- 
eral, not  the  head  of  the  nation.  Lee  would  have  won  glory, 
but  he  would  also  have  incurred  the  blame  for  failure.  As 
it  was,  Jefferson  Davis  received  no  recognition  for  the  part 
he  had  played  in  the  successes  of  the  army  while  he  bore 
the  responsibility  for  disaster,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  no  more  attributable  to  him  than  to  others. 

The  appointment  of  Lee  as  generalissimo  was  Davis's  best 
chance.  It  would  have  been  a  highly  politic  move  and,  at 
the  same  time,  one  actually  in  accord  with  his  own  inclina- 
tions. Bragg  had  definitely  failed  and  was  utterly  dis- 
credited; the  President  did  not  trust  Johnston  and  was 
deeply  worried  about  the  West;  he  would  have  been  glad 
to  turn  over  the  control  of  the  Western  army  and  the  set- 
tlement of  the  Western  problem  to  Lee.  He  was  not  blindly 
self-confident,  as  has  been  so  often  asserted.  He  frequently 
did  not  know  what  to  do  and  hesitated  for  a  long  period 
over  a  course  of  action,  as,  for  instance,  the  retention  or 
removal  of  Bragg.  He  was  exceedingly  jealous  of  encroach- 
ments on  his  authority,  but  he  constantly  sought  advice. 
In  fact,  it  seems  probable  that  he  did  little  except  on  the 
advice  of  trusted  councilors.     He  had  leaned  on  Lee  and 


268  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Seddon;  for  the  rest  of  the  war  he  was  to  depend  on  Bragg. 
But  he  had  prided  himself  on  performing  the  functions  of 
a  war  President — of  being  the  actual  commander  in  chief 
— and  he  would  have  gone  to  the  stake  before  he  would  vol- 
untarily have  relinquished  authority.  So  he  continued  to 
tinker  at  the  Western  problem  until  the  breakdown  came. 
What  he  really  wished  was  for  Lee  to  become  commander 
in  chief  in  fact,  though  not  in  name.  Lee,  however,  would 
not  accept  an  indefinite  command  of  the  other  armies;  prob- 
ably he  did  not  wish  to  be  generalissimo  on  any  terms.  His 
refusal  forced  Davis  back  on  his  own  resources. 

Congress  concentrated  its  attack  on  Northrop.  Senator 
Orr  of  South  Carolina  sought,  in  a  private  interview,  to 
induce  Davis  to  get  rid  of  the  target  of  criticism.  Northrop 
was  intensely  unpopular  because  of  the  oppressive  acts  of 
his  agents  in  impressing  food.  But  Davis  realized  that 
food  could  not  be  obtained  except  by  taking  it  from  an 
unwilling  populace,  and  he  supported  Northrop.  Again,  he 
bitterly  resented  criticism  of  his  action  in  retaining  a  hated 
subordinate;  he  had  learned  nothing  from  his  championship 
of  Bragg.  He  would  have  done  much  better  to  remove  the 
commissary-general  and  let  the  country  see  that  Northrop's 
successor  would  necessarily  follow  Northrop's  methods. 

The  judiciary  committee  of  the  Senate  presently  struck 
at  the  cabinet,  now  highly  unpopular.  It  reported  a  bill 
requiring  the  vacating  of  cabinet  offices  at  the  end  of  two 
years.  The  ministers  whose  heads  were  desired  were  Ben- 
jamin, Memminger  and  Mallory,  and  afterward  Seddon. 
The  bill  did  not  pass;  it  was  undoubtedly  unconstitutional, 
an  attempt  to  negative  the  President's  authority.  The  at- 
tack on  the  cabinet  was  only  temporarily  defeated:  it  was 
later    renewed    and    was    partially    successful;    Memmin- 


DOWNHILL  269 

ger  and  Seddon  resigned  and  Benjamin  and  Mallory 
remained. 

The  Senate  committee  on  military  affairs  now  took  a  hand. 
It  actually  declared  that  Quartermaster-General  Myers, 
who  had  been  removed  from  his  position  in  August,  1863, 
was  still  in  office  at  the  end  of  January,  1864.  As  Lawton, 
his  successor,  had  not  been  confirmed  by  the  Senate,  the 
committee  did  not  recognize  him  as  Quartermaster-General, 
though  he  was  exercising  control  over  his  department.  This 
was  an  almost  ludicrous  measure  of  resistance  to  the  Presi- 
dent. Myers  was  not  more  competent  than  Northrop,  and 
there  was  no  other  reason  for  this  championship  of  his 
cause  than  that  he  had  been  deposed  by  Davis  while  Nor- 
throp was  supported. 

Yet  in  spite  of  the  growing  opposition  to  the  President 
and  of  the  tendency  to  limit  his  power,  Congress  passed  a 
new  conscription  bill,  urged  by  Davis,  that  greatly  enlarged 
the  scope  of  the  draft.  Congress  saw  that  an  increase  of 
the  army  was  imperative.  This  was  the  proper  hour  for 
the  introduction  of  negroes  in  the  service — a  measure  that 
would  have  postponed  the  end  of  the  war.  Davis,  however, 
thought  that  victory  might  be  won  without  resort  to  so 
desperate  an  expedient.  He  realized  the  crisis  that  was  at 
hand,  yet  not  fully.  He  dreaded  a  drastic  action,  certain  to 
arouse  a  storm  and  not  unlikely  to  overthrow  the  govern- 
ment. Thus,  when  Patrick  Cleburne,  the  brilliant  corps 
commander  of  the  Western  army,  chose  this  time  to  bring 
forward  a  plan  for  the  enlistment  of  the  blacks  in  the  army, 
he  met  with  a  severe  rebuke.  The  government  decided  to 
attempt  to  find  enough  white  men  to  fill  the  depleted  ranks. 

In  the  winter  of  1864,  the  conscription  officers,  fortified 
by  the  new  law,  worked  with  great  industry  and  success. 


270  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

The  draft  service  maintained  two  bureaus:  one  for  Tennes- 
see, Mississippi  and  Alabama,  under  General  Pillow;  the 
other  for  the  East  under  Colonel  Preston.  In  December, 
1863,  the  Confederate  armies,  East  and  West,  were  worn 
to  the  bone.  During  the  late  winter,  the  conscript  officers 
pursued  draft  evaders  through  all  the  backwoods  and  moun- 
tain sections  of  the  South,  securing  thousands  of  recruits. 
They  seized  men  everywhere,  and  anybody.  They  even  laid 
hands  on  Postmaster- General  Reagan  in  the  streets  of  Rich- 
mond. Often  they  worked  at  the  risk  of  their  lives,  for 
the  country  was  full  of  armed  deserters  who  would  not  be 
forced  back  in  service  under  any  circumstances.  The  bulk 
of  the  new  levies  were  boys  sixteen  and  eighteen  years  old. 
Many  more  men  would  have  been  caught  in  the  dragnet 
but  for  the  exemptions  granted  by  the  national  and  state 
governments  and  the  action  of  some  of  the  state  courts  in 
taking  men  away  from  the  draft  officers.  In  Georgia,  thou- 
sands of  men  were  kept  out  of  the  Confederate  army  for 
home  defense  in  the  militia.  In  other  states,  the  militia  like- 
wise took  from  active  field  service  many  able-bodied  men. 

The  government's  great  difficulty  was  the  waning  man 
power.  It  is  true  that  the  food  shortage  was  acute  and 
that  Lee  was  led  to  invade  Pennsylvania  by  the  hope  of 
securing  provisions,  yet  by  the  spring  of  1864  the  food 
problem  had  been  partly  solved  and  there  were  more  rations 
in  the  supply  depots  than  for  some  time  before.  The  reason 
why  the  armies  were  constantly  on  the  verge  of  starvation 
was  bad  transportation,  which  was  almost  paralyzing  by 
the  beginning  of  1864.  Yet  transportation  might  have  been 
greatly  improved  by  energetic  measures:  that  was  not  an 
insuperable  difficulty.  As  for  arms  and  munitions,  the  Con- 
federacy had  never  been  so  well  supplied  as  at  the  opening 


DOWNHILL  271 

of  the  campaign  of  1864.  In  1861  and  1862,  there  had  been 
an  actual  shortage  of  arms  and  in  1863  of  ammunition: 
Lee's  men  had  been  forced  to  fire  scrap  iron  from  their  guns 
at  Gettysburg.  But  now  the  government  had  large  chemical 
and  munitions  plants,  under  the  management  of  eminent  ex- 
perts, and  improved  shells  and  good  powder  were  being 
made.  Small  arms  were  manufactured  in  quantities,  as  well 
as  excellent  field  pieces  and  siege  artillery  of  the  largest 
bores.  But  soldiers  could  not  be  secured  in  sufficient  num- 
bers to  face  the  armies  of  the  North.  The  recruits  were 
immature  boys  and  there  were  not  enough  of  them.  It 
is  true  that  the  Union  was  also  hard  pressed  to  find  men, 
but  its  resources  were  vastly  greater  than  those  of  the 
Confederacy. 

The  South's  one  existing  source  of  supply — the  blacks — 
was  not  touched.  As  the  Union  was  enlisting  many  regi- 
ments of  negroes,  the  Confederacy  now  faced  the  problem 
of  having  them  fight  for  or  against  it.  A  sentiment  small 
but  growing  favored  their  enrollment  in  the  army.  As 
early  as  1862,  at  a  secret  conference  of  Bragg's  generals, 
Cleburne  and  Breckinridge  declared  for  the  enlistment  of 
slaves.  A  recommendation  was  sent  to  the  government, 
which  considered  it  in  cabinet  session  and  tabled  it.  At 
this  time  the  hopes  of  the  South  were  high  and  negroes  did 
not  seem  needed. 

The  losses  of  1863  inevitably  revived  the  topic:  there 
was  an  acute  shortage  of  cannon  food.  Yet  to  fill  the 
army  with  blacks  was  nothing  less  than  a  revolution.  It 
must  have  meant  the  doom  of  slavery,  for  the  negroes  could 
not  be  expected  to  risk  their  lives  as  bondmen.  It  would 
have  awakened  intense  opposition  and  Stephens  would  have 
outdone  himself  in  denunciations  of  the  government.     Still 


272  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

in  1864  the  employment  of  negroes  in  the  army  was  possible, 
because  the  South  was  no  longer  fighting  for  states'  rights 
but  for  national  independence,  and  the  more  intelligent  part 
of  the  populace  would  have  made  any  sacrifices  to  attain 
it.  The  opposition  to  negro  soldiers  would  have  come  far 
less  from  slaveholders  than  from  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
army,  the  non-slaveholders.  The  Southern  masses  sup- 
ported the  Confederate  government  partly  from  a  knowledge 
that  the  Confederacy  stood  squarely  for  white  rule,  for 
the  principle  of  racial  domination.  If,  then,  the  govern- 
ment had  put  the  blacks  on  a  parity  with  the  white  private 
soldiers,  by  enlisting  them  under  the  colors,  a  protest  would 
have  followed  that  might  have  swept  the  government  out 
of  power.  Beyond  a  doubt,  Jefferson  Davis  knew  this  and 
feared  it. 

Yet  the  need  of  soldiers  was  so  great  in  the  early  months 
of  1864  that  he  would  have  done  well  to  study  the  matter. 
The  presence  of  200,000  new  troops  in  the  army  at  this 
time  would  have  immensely  altered  the  situation.  Garri- 
sons might  have  been  replaced  by  these  negro  soldiers  and 
Lee's  army  could  have  been  increased  to  100,000  men:  he 
would  have  met  Grant  on  almost  equal  terms.  Likewise,  the 
Western  army  would  have  been  raised  to  the  same  size, 
and  Sherman's  march  would  have  been  impossible.  The  mili- 
tary advantages  would  seem  to  have  outweighed  the  risk  of 
revolution.  It  was  a  choice  of  risks,  anyway,  and  often 
what  seems  the  least  risk  is  the  greatest. 

Cleburne,  clearly  seeing  the  need,  took  the  initiative  in 
approaching  the  government.  A  meeting  of  the  corps  and 
division  commanders  of  Johnston's  army  was  held  on  the 
first  of  January,  and  Cleburne  presented  his  proposal.  Most 
of  the  officers  present  favored  it,  though  Johnston  himself 


DOWNHILL  273 

expressed  no  opinion.  One  or  two,  however,  protested  to 
the  government,  and  the  government  sent  word  to  Johnston 
not  to  let  news  of  the  meeting  get  out.  Davis  seems  to 
have  been  in  some  trepidation.  Johnston,  finding  the  gov- 
ernment adverse,  declared  himself  to  be  opposed,  and  noth- 
ing more  was  heard  of  a  plan  which  might  have  accomplished 
much.  A  year  later  Davis  gave  the  scheme  his  approval,  but 
that  was  a  year  too  late. 

The  whole  matter  illustrates  one  of  Jefferson  Davis's 
cardinal  defects  as  a  revolutionary  leader:  he  was  too  much 
inclined  to  take  the  course  of  immediate  safety.  Revolu- 
tion is,  in  its  nature,  a  gamble,  and  great  risks  must 
be  run.  Washington  continually  took  great  risks,  and  be- 
cause he  did  he  succeeded  in  the  end.  If  he  had  remained 
on  the  passive  defensive  he  would  have  lost.  Lee  took  great 
risks,  and  because  he  took  them  he  nearly  carried  the  cause 
to  success.  Jefferson  Davis,  however,  contrary  to  the  re- 
ceived opinion,  was  a  man  of  slow  and  cautious  disposition. 
So  far  from  being  precipitate,  he  was  not  precipitate  enough. 
His  natural  tendency  was  to  temporize  in  the  hope  that 
something  would  aturn  up."  He  waited  in  the  autumn  of 
1 86 1  with  disastrous  results.  He  failed  to  act  with  great 
energy  in  the  early  winter  of  1862,  dreaming  of  foreign 
intervention.  But  he  could  act  when  absolutely  neces- 
sary— act  with  swiftness  and  resolution — and  his  quick 
action  in  1862  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  saving  the  Con- 
federacy for  the  time.  Now,  however,  he  put  off  the  evil 
day,  trusting  that  it  would  never  come.  He  would  not  take 
the  risk  of  enlisting  negroes,  and  a  few  months  later  he 
took  an  infinitely  greater  risk.  His  caution,  his  conservatism, 
his  disinclination  to  act  radically  hastened  the  end  of  the 
Confederacy  and  cost  it  its  last  chance. 


274  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Cleburne's  project  was  dismissed  with  these  words  from 
Davis:  "Deeming  it  to  be  injurious  to  the  public  service 
that  such  a  subject  should  be  mooted,  or  even  known  to 
be  entertained  by  persons  possessed  of  the  confidence  and 
respect  of  the  people,  I  have  concluded  that  the  best  policy 
under  the  circumstances  will  be  to  avoid  all  publicity."  * 
Johnston  replied  that  the  idea  was  Cleburne's  alone.  We 
may  add:  let  the  credit  be  Cleburne's  alone.  He  alone 
had  the  insight  to  see  and  the  courage  to  urge  a  meas- 
ure which,  if  adopted  early  enough,  might  have  saved  the 
country. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Jefferson  Davis,  when  he  hushed  up 
Cleburne's  proposal,  was  under  the  compulsion  of  a  new 
military  idea,  an  idea  far  rasher  than  Cleburne's  though  not 
revolutionary.  He  had  decided  on  an  offensive  campaign 
in  the  West.  This  decision  was  the  first  fruit  of  Bragg's 
influence.  The  evil  genius  of  the  Confederacy  was  now 
in  Richmond,  in  greater  favor  than  ever.  It  was  Bragg's 
proposal  that  Johnston  should  make  an  offensive  campaign. 
Davis  quickly  agreed  to  so  agreeable  a  plan,  and  even  Lee 
seems  to  have  thought  that  it  was  possible.  Davis  had  tele- 
graphed Bragg  at  the  end  of  January  to  come  to  Richmond, 
adding,  "I  want  to  confer  with  you."  2  Bragg  went,  and  the 
month  of  February,  1864,  was  spent  in  working  out  a  plan 
for  a  campaign  in  Tennessee  in  the  spring. 

Johnston  was  told  what  was  expected  of  him.  He  did 
not  like  it,  but  Davis  offered  to  enlarge  his  army  if  he 
would  make  the  effort.  Longstreet,  who  was  still  in  Tennes- 
see and  who  was  to  join  Johnston  as  the  latter  advanced, 
also  disapproved  the  plan.    He  wrote  Johnston  that  if  the 

xO.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  596. 
20.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  607. 


DOWNHILL  275 

Confederate  army  moved  north  its  communications  would 
be  in  great  danger  of  being  cut. 

These  practical  soldiers  had  every  reason  to  shy  from  a 
scheme  so  impossible  as  a  Confederate  offensive  in  the  West 
in  1864.  Bragg  had  been  unable  to  maintain  himself  at 
Chattanooga  in  1863  when  not  greatly  outnumbered  by 
the  enemy.  Now,  after  Missionary  Ridge  and  the  com- 
plete defeat  of  the  Western  army,  he  was  demanding  that 
Johnston,  with  the  army  that  had  been  routed,  should  in- 
vade Tennessee  in  the  face  of  the  victorious  army,  larger 
and  stronger  than  before  and  under  the  command  of  one  of 
the  best  of  Union  generals,  Sherman.  The  principal  strategic 
points  in  Tennessee  were  forts  held  by  strong  garrisons. 
The  Confederates  must  advance  northward,  leaving  these 
forts  behind  them  or  on  their  flanks  as  a  constant  menace. 
What,  if  any,  rational  hope  of  success  Bragg  entertained 
it  is  difficult  to  say,  but  it  is  certain  that  he  misrepresented 
to  Davis  the  conditions  in  the  West,  and  largely  through  his 
misrepresentations  he  induced  the  President  to  favor  his 
desperate  scheme. 

The  truth  is  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  undergoing  a  trans- 
formation that  comes  to  many  prudent,  conservative  men 
whose  prudence  and  conservatism  fail  to  save  them  from  dis- 
aster— he  was  becoming  a  gambler.  He  knew  now  that 
nothing  was  to  be  expected  from  Europe,  that  the  South 
must  work  out  its  salvation  unaided.  He  also  realized  that 
the  condition  of  affairs  was  desperate  and  that  something 
had  to  be  done.  He  had  taken  risks  at  Chickamauga  and 
had  nearly  saved  Tennessee.  He  was  prepared  to  take 
greater  risks  in  the  hope  that  a  victory  would  change  the 
whole  aspect  of  the  war. 

But  when  a  man  whose  nature  is  opposed  to  taking  risks 


276  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

turns  gambler  he  is  likely  to  go  too  far.  His  judgment 
is  likely  to  be  overborne  by  the  frenzy  of  desperation;  he 
is  likely  to  plunge  ahead,  defying  the  chances.  We  see 
this  tendency  in  men  who  seek  to  recoup  themselves  for 
losses  by  speculating  in  the  stock  market.  They  usually 
only  damn  themselves  the  deeper.  It  was  so  with  Jefferson 
Davis.  His  cautious  defensive  had  broken  down;  every- 
where the  enemy  were  pressing  forward,  the  Confederates 
falling  back.  He  felt  that  some  action  of  a  decisive  nature 
was  imperative,  and  Bragg  was  ever  at  his  side  telling  him 
that  the  thing  that  would  save  the  country  was  an  offensive 
campaign  in  the  West.  Bragg  himself  had  not  saved  the 
West,  but  that  was  another  matter.  He  would  have  done  so, 
he  explained,  but  for  his  incapable  subordinates  and  his 
lack  of  troops.  He  now  urged  the  concentration  of  all  avail- 
able troops  in  the  Western  army  and  a  forward  movement. 

It  was  probable  that  Bragg  was  moved  by  two  motives: 
he  naturally  preferred  the  offensive,  though  incapable  of 
executing  offensive  movements  himself.  In  the  second  place, 
he  had  come  to  dislike  Johnston  intensely;  and  if  Johnston 
declined  to  take  the  offensive  the  new  commander  would  be 
finally  discredited  and  might  be  removed.  In  fact,  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  Johnston's  replacement  by  Hood 
in  July,  1864,  was  a  measure  toward  which  Bragg  moved 
from  the  very  moment  he  arrived  in  Richmond  and  became 
the  President's  military  adviser.  It  was  the  culmination 
of  a  carefully  worked  out  plot. 

Bragg  sent  Johnston  an  outline  of  the  plan  of  the  offensive 
campaign.  Johnston  replied  but  did  not  commit  hirnself. 
He  wanted  more  troops  for  an  aggressive  movement.  Bragg 
telegraphed  him  on  March  21:  "Your  dispatch  does  not 
indicate  an  acceptance  of  the  plan  proposed.    The7  troops 


DOWNHILL  277 

can  only  be  drawn  from  other  points  for  an  advance.  Upon 
your  decision  on  that  point  further  action  must  depend."  * 
Bragg  was  skillfully  maneuvering  Johnston  into  a  position 
where  he  would  be  made  to  appear  either  timid  or  a 
shirker. 

A  forward  movement  into  Tennessee,  with  Longstreet 
added  to  Johnston's  force,  would  have  resulted  in  a  battle 
with  Sherman  in  which  the  Confederates  might  have  had  a 
chance  to  win.  But  Lee  was  calling  for  Longstreet  to  return 
to  Virginia,  and  without  Longstreet  the  offensive  campaign 
was  wholly  impossible. 

John  B.  Hood,  late  of  Lee's  army  but  who  had  been  re- 
cently made  a  lieutenant  general  and  given  command  of  a 
corps  in  Johnston's  army,  largely  because  he  was  Bragg's 
protege  and  in  full  sympathy  with  his  plans,  wrote  from 
the  West  on  March  17,  declaring  that  the  troops  were  "eager 
for  the  fray."  He  urged  the  junction  of  Polk's  and  other 
troops  in  the  West  with  the  army  of  Tennessee,  which  would 
be  raised  to  60,000  men,  and  then  the  union  with  Longstreet 
in  Tennessee,  which  he  fancied  would  increase  the  army 
to  90,000  men. 

Longstreet,  however,  had  only  10,000  men,  and  he  pres- 
ently marched  away  to  join  Lee  in  Virginia.  This  should 
have  put  an  end  to  the  project  of  a  Western  invasion.  But 
Bragg  refused  to  abandon  a  scheme  that  had  rooted  itself 
in  his  flighty  mind  and  that  might  result  in  Johnston's  fall. 
Davis  was  foolish  enough  to  continue  to  put  confidence  in 
Bragg,  even  after  the  latter  had  given  this  plain  evidence 
of  aberration.  In  the  middle  of  April,  an  official  in  Rich- 
mond informed  Johnston  that  he  could  not  have  Longstreet, 
but  added:  "Can  I  tell  the  President  you  will  assume  the 

aO.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  664. 


278  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

offensive  with  15,000  additional  troops?  It  is  important 
that  I  receive  your  reply  immediately. "  * 

Johnston  did  not  refuse  outright  but  he  temporized,  mak- 
ing conditions.  The  government  ordered  Polk's  command 
in  Mississippi  and  some  other  troops  to  join  him,  some- 
what increasing  his  army  but  still  leaving  him  greatly  in- 
ferior to  Sherman.  Bragg  now  wrote  to  Johnston  that  his 
conditions  had  been  fulfilled,  though  the  army  of  Ten- 
nessee was  not  strong.  A  month  later,  when  the  troops  had 
joined  Johnston  and  no  more  seemed  available,  Bragg  sent 
him  word:  "Every  disposable  man  now  sent,  and  from  the 
high  condition  in  which  your  army  is  reported  we  rely  on 
brilliant  success."  2 

Bragg  had  now  made  out  his  case  with  the  President.  He 
had  represented  the  Western  army  as  being  large  enough 
and  in  good  enough  condition  to  make  a  forward  movement 
into  Tennessee.  If  the  army  did  not  advance,  it  would  be 
Johnston's  fault.  In  that  case,  Johnston,  whose  great  popu- 
larity galled  the  unpopular  Bragg  almost  beyond  endurance, 
would  have  to  make  way  for  Bragg's  appointee.  The  mili- 
tary adviser  had  put  the  commander  of  the  army  of  Ten- 
nessee in  a  position  from  which  he  could  not  extricate  him- 
self save  by  some  action  of  a  rash  and  dangerous  nature, 
and  Bragg  knew  that  Johnston  would  not  act  in  that  fashion. 
It  is  more  than  probable  that  he  counted  on  Johnston's 
speedy  resignation.  He  already  had  his  own  candidate  for 
the  place. 

By  this  time  Bragg  was  completely  in  the  ascendant  at 
Richmond.  He  did  not  attempt  to  interfere  with  Lee,  who 
managed  his  own  army  to  suit  himself,  but  everything  else 

*0.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  657. 
*0.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  671. 


DOWNHILL  279 

came  under  his  control.  He  replaced  Seddon  in  Davis's 
confidence  and  largely  replaced  Seddon  as  Secretary  of  War, 
writing  to  the  various  army  leaders  much  as  the  head 
of  a  general  staff  might  do.  Jefferson  Davis  was  more 
under  his  influence  than  he  had  ever  been  under  that  of 
Benjamin,  Lee  or  Seddon.  Bragg  commanded  his  unlimited 
confidence. 

The  hold  gained  by  the  discredited  general  may  well  seem 
singular.  He  had  few  friends  anywhere,  being  disliked 
by  soldiers,  detested  by  politicians,  derided  by  the  country. 
Yet,  total  failure  that  he  was,  he  exercised  a  wider  in- 
fluence over  the  strong  mind  of  Jefferson  Davis  than  any 
other  man.  A  year  before  the  President  had  not  believed 
in  him  as  much  as  he  did  now  after  a  year  darkened  by  al- 
most irretrievable  disaster.  But  Bragg  was  continually 
with  Davis  and  he  was  a  very  insinuating  man;  he  talked 
authoritatively  on  military  affairs,  being  as  admirable  a 
general  on  paper  as  he  was  poor  in  the  field.  He  completely 
convinced  Davis  of  the  soundness  of  his  deductions,  partly, 
no  doubt,  because  Davis  wished  to  be  convinced.  Davis 
wished  to  believe  that  the  Confederacy  was  still  strong 
enough  for  a  forward  movement;  he  did  not  like  to  face  the 
reality  that  it  was  fast  weakening  toward  its  end. 

Besides,  Bragg  flattered  him.  Jefferson  Davis  had,  in  an 
excessive  degree,  the  weaknesses  of  sensitiveness.  Tortured 
with  self-doubts  and  melancholy,  he  was  peculiarly  open  to 
the  seductions  of  flattery.  In  Davis's  case  the  temptation 
was  doubly  great  at  this  time  because  he  was  almost  over- 
borne by  the  labors  and  responsibility  of  his  position.  He 
knew  that  his  popularity  was  gone  and  he  felt  that  the  cause 
was  failing.  He  was  bitterly  hurt  by  the  attacks  of  press 
and  politicians.    Bragg  still  talked  confidently  of  the  future, 


280  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

still  deferred  to  him,  still  credited  him  with  great  military 
talent.    His  devotion  to  Bragg  became  unbounded. 

Bragg  did  not  establish  himself  in  Richmond  without 
opposition.  The  public  did  not  want  him  in  an  official 
capacity.  When  a  bill  was  introduced  in  the  Senate  to  give 
him  the  rank  and  pay  of  a  commanding  general,  Orr  and 
Wigfall  attacked  it  bitterly.  The  Richmond  newspapers 
poured  ridicule  on  him,  and  the  city  was  full  of  absurd 
rumors  of  his  extravagant  acts.  About  the  same  time,  Foote 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  assailed  Memminger  and 
proposed  to  make  Lee  dictator.  The  Senate  finally  gave 
Bragg  his  pay  as  general,  but  Memminger  was  so  moved 
by  the  assaults  on  him  that  he  resigned,  on  June  20,  1864. 
His  going  was  greeted  with  joy,  but  the  financial  condition 
of  the  Confederacy  was  too  desperate  now  to  be  remedied 
by  the  greatest  money  juggler  that  ever  lived.  Davis  had 
sustained  Memminger  through  more  than  three  years  of  in- 
cessant criticism,  and  the  Secretary's  passing  marked  the 
first  distinct  victory  of  the  congressional  opposition. 

Meanwhile  the  campaign  had  opened  with  an  advance  of 
Sherman's  army.  It  was  not  only  evident  that  the  offensive 
in  the  West  was  a  dream  but  it  was  highly  doubtful  that  the 
Confederacy  would  hold  its  own  on  the  defensive.  Bragg 
had  harped  for  three  months  on  the  theme  that  the  Confed- 
erates must  concentrate  at  the  beginning  of  the  campaign  and 
take  the  initiative  before  the  Union  forces  could  unite  to 
crush  them.  Theoretically,  this  sounded  well  enough;  but 
the  Union  facilities  for  concentration  were  now  so  much  bet- 
ter than  those  of  the  South  that  an  advance  into  Tennessee 
would  have  been  followed  by  a  quick  junction  of  the  North- 
ern forces  by  means  of  the  railroads,  which  in  Tennessee  had 
been  extensively  repaired  and  were  in  good  running  order. 


DOWNHILL  281 

Bragg's  plan  had  been  the  hopeless  vision  of  a  man  who  had 
done  little  on  the  offensive  himself  under  far  more  favor- 
able circumstances.  He  demanded  of  Johnston  what  he 
himself  would  never  have  thought  of  attempting.  Sherman's 
forward  movement  into  Georgia  at  once  dispelled  the  dream. 
Yet  this  still  influenced  the  mind  of  Jefferson  Davis,  in  that 
it  led  him  to  believe  that  Johnston  had  been  at  fault  in  not 
assuming  the  offensive  and  in  letting  Sherman  take  the  initia- 
tive. Jefferson  Davis  was  unacquainted  with  the  grim 
realities  of  the  situation. 


XII 

THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE 

IN  the  spring  of  1864  the  Union  Government  began  a 
concerted  series  of  military  movements  intended  to 
complete  the  work  of  the  year  before  and  bring  about  the 
overthrow  of  the  Confederacy  by  autumn.  The  Union  was 
far  stronger  than  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  Its  remark- 
able government  had  succeeded  in  establishing  a  nation  out 
of  the  chaos  of  factions  existing  in  1861  and  in  creating  a 
great  army  and  a  great  navy.  It  had  been  accused  of  tramp- 
ling on  the  Constitution,  and,  no  doubt,  with  truth,  for  the 
Constitution  hampered  a  vigorous  government  in  an  emer- 
gency. It  represented  the  triumphant  industrial  democracy, 
just  as  the  Confederate  government  did  not  represent  the 
planter  class.  It  was  an  enormous  energy  guided  by  shrewd- 
ness, a  junto  of  geniuses  who  did  not  love  each  other  but  who 
worked  together  for  a  common  object.  Seward,  that  master 
of  craft,  had  the  hardest  task  of  all,  for  he  had  to  beguile 
and  subsidize  Europe  into  permitting  the  continuance  of  a 
doubtfully  legal  blockade  that  was  contrary  to  its  interests 
and  to  persuade  it  not  to  sanction  a  separation  of  the  repub- 
lic vastly  to  its  advantage.  His  success  stamps  him  as  a 
great  diplomat.  Chase,  too,  had  shown  rare  judgment  in 
juggling  the  finances  of  a  distracted  country  on  the  verge 
of  bankruptcy,  with  its  business  temporarily  ruined.    In  spite 

of  its  oppressive  load  of  debt,  the  credit  of  the  government 

282 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  283 

was  good.  Stanton,  as  war  minister,  had  put  forth  immense 
efforts,  raising  huge  numbers  of  troops  and  finding  generals 
to  lead  them  to  victory.  Lincoln,  the  tyro  of  1861,  had  de- 
veloped into  a  wonderful  ruler.  He  drove  his  team  of 
Titans  well:  unlike  a  small  man,  he  gave  them  a  free  rein 
and  did  not  attempt  to  conduct  their  departments  for  them; 
he  soothed  politicians,  united  factions  and  grew  in  the  popu- 
lar imagination  with  the  passing  months.  When  at  last  a 
general  of  the  first  order  appeared  in  Grant,  the  President 
made  him  commander  of  all  the  armies  and  permitted  him 
to  win  the  war  in  his  own  way.  In  the  rare  combination  of 
practical  wisdom,  undaunted  courage,  and  noble  aspiration, 
Lincoln  stands  as  one  of  the  great  figures  of  history. 
Against  his  government  of  business  men  and  masterly  poli- 
ticians were  contrasted  the  councilors  of  Davis,  who  did  not 
measure  up  to  their  opponents. 

Grant  was  an  originator  of  great  plans.  He  devised  the 
second  American  essay  in  grand  strategy.  By  the  first, 
Washington  had  formed  a  combination  of  his  army  at  New 
York  with  the  French  fleet  in  the  West  Indies  which  won 
Yorktown  and  secured  independence.  Grant  now  began  to 
put  in  operation  a  plan  for  simultaneously  overwhelming  the 
army  of  Tennessee  and  defeating  and  driving  from  Rich- 
mond the  army  of  Virginia.  If  these  two  main  Confederate 
forces  were  destroyed,  the  subjugation  of  the  country  would 
follow.  But  it  is  easy  to  dream  of  grand  strategy,  hard  to 
carry  it  out.  Grant,  by  his  strong  practical  sense  and  his 
powerful  will,  did  carry  out  his  plan  and  thereby  brought 
the  war  to  an  end.  But  for  it  the  South  might  have  resisted 
a  year  or  two  longer,  with  a  chance  of  winning  in  the  end. 

The  enormous  gain  of  Grant's  system  of  coordinating  the 
movements  of  the  main  Union  armies  in  the  East  and  West 


284  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

was  not  immediately  evident,  for  Grant  found  a  formidable 
obstacle  in  his  path.  Lee  was  now  at  his  ripe  best,  and 
there  have  been  few  better  commanders  of  a  single  army. 
He  had  always  succeeded  except  at  Gettysburg,  and  he  had 
failed  there  because  he  had  used  tactics  practicable  for 
Jackson  but  not  for  Jackson's  successors.  Taught  by  that 
failure,  Lee  adapted  his  methods  to  his  means  and  rose  to 
his  greatest  heights  in  the  Wilderness. 

In  May,  1864,  Grant  crossed  the  Rappahannock  into  a 
dense  jungle  of  pines  and  small  oaks  that  stood  across  his 
line  of  march  to  the  south.  He  was  trying  the  overland  route 
to  Richmond,  but  his  main  object  was  to  defeat  Lee's  in- 
domitable army,  which  he  hoped  to  fight  in  the  open  coun- 
try. That  army  had  become  the  single  great  obstacle  in  the 
path  of  Union  victory:  the  primary  objective  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi had  been  gained;  the  secondary  objective,  Virginia, 
was  now  the  first.  For  this  reason  Grant  had  left  the  West, 
where  Sherman  succeeded  him,  and  had  come  to  Virginia  to 
overthrow  Lee.  Since  Gettysburg  the  North  had  under- 
rated Lee,  and  government  and  people  alike  anticipated  that 
the  general  who  had  won  such  triumphs  in  the  West  would 
soon  end  the  war. 

The  expected  did  not  happen.  Grant's  army  of  120,000 
men  was  assailed  in  the  jungle  by  Lee,  with  the  60,000  men 
he  mustered.  The  difference  in  numbers  hardly  measures 
the  disadvantages  under  which  Lee  labored.  The  Union 
army  was  not  only  twice  as  large  as  his,  with  twice  as  many 
pieces  of  artillery  and  equipped  according  to  the  latest 
ideas  of  military  science,  but  the  Union  rank  and  file  were 
now  better  than  his  own:  the  superiority  of  the  Confederate 
infantry  was  about  gone.  Lee  had  lost  thousands  of  his 
veterans  in  battle  and  by  desertion  and  their  places  were 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  285 

filled  by  raw  recruits,  for  the  most  part  immature  boys  who 
remind  one  of  Napoleon's  levies  in  1814.  These  valiant 
children  did  marvelously  well,  but  they  were  hardly  equal, 
individually,  to  the  maturer  men  in  the  Northern  ranks. 

Lee's  decision  to  fight  in  the  thicket  was  a  stroke  of  genius2 
because  he  thereby  rendered  ineffective  the  stronger  Union 
artillery.  He  also  counted  on  the  possibility  of  surprise. 
Indeed,  he  so  skillfully  neutralized  the  advantages  of  the 
Union  army  that  he  very  nearly  won  a  great  victory.  The 
battle  of  the  Wilderness  raged  for  two  days,  May  5  and  6, 
1864.  In  that  frightful  conflict  in  the  bush,  that  wholesale 
assassination  in  the  dark,  where  men  fought  breast  to  breast 
and  yet  unseeing  and  unseen  and  the  wounded  roasted  in  the 
flaming  brush,  Lee  had  much  the  better  of  it.  On  the  second 
day  the  Union  army  was  hurled  back  with  terrific  slaughter, 
outflanked  and  weakening,  when  Longstreet,  who  was  in 
immediate  command,  was  wounded  by  the  fire  of  his  own 
men  and  the  hard-pressed  Northerners  gained  a  respite  to 
entrench  themselves.     The  victory  remained  uncompleted. 

Grant  now  attempted  to  move  around  Lee  to  the  east,  but 
was  checkmated  and  repulsed  in  an  even  more  awful  struggle 
at  Spotsylvania,  where  for  once,  in  literal  fact,  the  dead  lay 
in  piles  and  the  trenches  were  muddy  with  blood.  Again  and 
again  he  attempted  to  flank  Lee,  only  to  fail  each  time. 
Finally  at  Cold  Harbor,  on  the  old  battlefield  of  the  Seven 
Days,  the  Union  commander,  weary  of  attempting  to  out- 
maneuver  Lee,  made  a  frontal  assault  on  the  Confederate 
trenches  which  failed  with  frightful  butchery. 

The  attempt  to  crush  Lee  and  bring  the  war  to  an  end 
speedily  had  completely  miscarried.  In  this  struggle,  the 
most  terrible  ever  fought  on  American  soil,  in  which  the  two 
armies  together  lost  nearly  100,000  men,  Grant  had  put 


286  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

forth  his  utmost  exertions  in  vain.  At  the  cost  of  some 
65,000  of  his  troops  he  had  approached  Richmond,  but  Lee 
was  still  in  front,  undefeated,  and  the  Confederate  morale 
was  rising  in  proportion  as  the  Union  morale  fell. 

It  was  a  critical  moment  and  might  have  proved  fatal  to 
the  Union  cause  had  a  weaker  spirit  been  the  leader  of  the 
army.  But  Grant  was  the  most  rugged  man  of  action  in 
American  history.  Although  outgeneraled  by  Lee  and 
brought  to  a  standstill  by  the  Southern  army,  he  had  no 
thought  of  accepting  defeat  so  long  as  the  government  con- 
tinued to  send  him  the  myriads  of  recruits  needed  to  fill  the 
gaps  in  his  lines.  It  was  impossible  to  storm  Lee's  trenches 
or  to  get  at  Richmond  north  of  the  James  River,  but  it  might 
be  possible  to  cut  the  city's  communications  with  the  South. 
Grant  now  made  his  greatest  move,  a  move  that  is  the  best 
evidence  of  his  military  genius  and  tenacity  of  purpose.  On 
the  morrow  of  his  dreadful  repulse  at  Cold  Harbor,  he  threw 
his  army  across  the  James  with  masterly  skill  and  advanced 
on  Petersburg,  the  key  of  Richmond. 

Petersburg  was  saved  by  Beauregard,  who  had  come  to 
Virginia  to  take  a  small  command.  He  was  admirable  on 
the  defensive  and  now  foiled  the  Union  attacks  until 
Lee  sent  aid.  The  two  main  armies  soon  appeared  before 
Petersburg  and  confronted  each  other  behind  interminable 
lines  of  earthworks  that  were  the  ancestors  of  those  on  the 
Aisne.  The  war  in  Virginia  had  now  reached  the  stage 
of  deadlock.  It  was  Grant's  plan  to  hold  Lee  fast  at  Peters- 
burg until  the  Western  army,  under  Sherman,  could  come 
up  behind  and  envelop  him.  The  Northern  commander  had 
given  up  the  hope  of  winning  the  war  by  the  immediate 
defeat  of  Lee. 

So  far  Grant,  indeed,  had  failed  in  Virginia.    It  was  the 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  287 

present  failure,  not  the  future  prospect,  that  the  Northern 
public  saw.  It  fell  into  the  deepest  depression  of  the  whole 
war.  The  campaign  had  been  widely  advertised  as  the 
coup  de  grace.  The  newspapers  had  prophesied  the  end  of 
the  Confederacy  with  even  more  than  customary  journalistic 
fatuousness;  the  people  believed  that  the  end  was  surely 
approaching.  Instead  of  this,  Lee  was  as  terrible  as  ever 
and  the  Union  losses  surpassed  anything  known  before. 
Grant,  with  his  great  army,  had  not  repeated  Donelson  and 
Vicksburg, 

The  psychology  of  depression  is  a  curious  study,  for  de- 
pression is  one  of  the  most  vital  factors  in  war  as  it  is  in 
ordinary  life.  If  other  things  are  in  the  remotest  degree 
equal,  the  nation  that  bears  depression  best  will  win.  For 
this  reason  it  is  the  most  important  function  of  national 
leaders  to  blind  the  people  to  the  odds  against  them.  Makers 
of  nations,  such  as  William  the  Silent,  have  succeeded  in 
this.  Conversely,  revolutionary  movements  have  often  failed 
for  just  the  lack  of  this:  the  truth  has  been  seen  too  clearly. 

In  the  summer  of  1864  both  the  North  and  the  South  were 
depressed,  but  the  Northern  depression  was  the  more  dan- 
gerous because  it  followed  a  season  of  prosperity.  Vicks- 
burg  and  Gettysburg  had  led  the  North  to  think  that  the 
resisting  power  of  the  South  was  gone,  that  the  war  was 
almost  over.  The  Wilderness  rudely  shook  this  idea  by 
showing  the  world  that  Lee  was  practically  unbeatable  in 
Virginia,  even  by  the  best  general  and  the  largest  army  of 
the  North.  Once  more  the  North  began  to  wonder  whether 
the  South  could  ever  be  brought  to  submission,  and  a  senti- 
ment for  peace  even  at  the  price  of  Southern  independence 
made  itself  felt. 

The  Southern  morale  had  fallen  low  in  December,  1863, 


288  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

after  Missionary  Ridge.  But  as  the  terrible  fighting  in  Vir- 
ginia in  May,  1864,  continued  and  it  was  seen  that  Lee 
more  than  held  his  own,  the  confidence  of  the  Southern 
people  began  to  revive.  The  hope  was  reflected  in  com- 
modity prices,  which  fell  sharply  in  August,  1864;  for  in- 
stance, flour  from  $500  a  barrel  to  $200.  In  Europe,  the 
brightening  of  Confederate  prospects  was  evident  in  the 
rise  of  the  cotton  bonds,  which  had  fallen  as  low  as  37 
in  December,  1863,  but  which  advanced  to  80  in  1864,  on 
the  news  of  McClellan's  nomination  for  the  presidency.1- 

Another  campaign  in  Virginia  had  ended  in  nothing,  just 
as  had  the  efforts  of  McDowell,  McClellan,  Pope,  Burnside, 
Hooker  and  Meade  before;  and  in  June,  1864,  the  war-weary 
and  the  pacifists  asserted  themselves  as  they  had  not  done  in 
the  previous  two  years.  It  was  the  perilous  moment  of  an 
opening  presidential  campaign.  We  might  almost  smile  now 
to  think  that  Lincoln  ever  doubted  his  reelection;  but  the 
doubt  did  not  seem  absurd  to  men  of  his  time.  The  govern- 
ment had  been  fighting  the  South  for  three  years  and  had 
not  been  able  to  prevail:  to  superficial  minds,  always  greatly 
in  the  majority,  it  appeared  that  the  war  might  go  on  for 
many  more  years  before  victory  declared  itself.  To  many 
men  not  superficial  the  South  seemed  to  have  grown  into  a 
separate  nation  in  the  long  period  of  estrangement;  and  they 
thought  the  recognition  of  the  fact  would  be  best.  Still 
others  thought  that  the  South  might  be  brought  back  into 
the  Union  by  a  suspension  of  fighting  and  the  calling  of  a 
convention  of  states  empowered  to  arrange  a  compromise. 

It  is  possible,  though  not  probable,  that  if  November, 
1864,  had  arrived  with  the  Confederacy  still  apparently 
strong  Lincoln  might  not  have  been  reelected.    The  Demo- 

1  Schwab,  The  Confederate  States  of  America,  36. 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  289 

cratic  party,  which  favored  the  plan  of  bringing  the  South 
back  to  the  Union  by  a  compromise,  would  have  appealed 
strongly  to  the  thousands  who  were  tired  of  the  war  and  its 
increasing  sacrifices.  This  situation,  which  seemed  to  offer 
some  hope  to  the  Confederacy,  was  watched  by  Jefferson 
Davis  with  close  attention.  Indeed,  the  Democratic  party 
had  come  to  be  his  main  reliance  for  the  termination  of  the 
war,  for  he  had  abandoned  the  dream  of  foreign  interven- 
tion. In  March,  1864,  he  was  heard  to  say,  "We  have  no 
friends  abroad."  x 

Davis's  direct  interest  in  military  operations  revived  as 
the  war  once  more  drew  near  Richmond.  He  kept  in  close 
touch  with  Lee  and  rode  out  daily  to  see  him  while  he  held 
the  lines  at  Cold  Harbor.  Richmond  was  once  more  thrilled 
with  alarms.  These  had  begun  in  March,  1864,  when  Union 
raiders  reached  the  outskirts  of  the  city  and  Jefferson  Davis 
in  his  office  heard  the  sound  of  their  guns.  Again,  in  May, 
the  Union  cavalry  penetrated  to  the  outer  fortifications  and 
a  skirmish  took  place  in  which  the  dashing  Stuart  fell.  Davis 
was  present  at  this  action  and  prepared  to  take  command 
when  Stuart  fell,  but  the  raiders  were  driven  off  quickly. 
The  President  was  filled  with  a  longing  for  battle,  for  the 
physical  joy  of  combat,  for  an  excitement  that  would  make 
him  momentarily  forget  his  cares  and  depression.  He  con- 
tinually chafed  under  the  restriction  that  kept  the  chief 
magistrate  of  the  nation  from  participating  in  fighting.  He 
still  retained  something  of  his  faith  in  his  military  ability. 
He  still  gave  Lee  advice,  though  less  and  less  of  it,  largely 
leaving  the  general  to  his  own  devices,  to  the  management 
of  his  own  command,  long  since  known  as  "Lee's  army." 

In  1864,  Jefferson  Davis  still  hoped  for  success,  though 

1  Jones,  2,  175. 


290  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

only  after  the  greatest  privations  and  sacrifices.  Sometimes 
he  showed  what  was  in  his  mind.  Once  when  walking  in 
the  capitol  grounds  with  several  girls,  he  pointed  to  some 
small  boys  playing  near.  "Even  those  boys,"  he  said,  "will 
have  their  trial." 

A  girl  asked  him,  "But  how  shall  the  army  be  fed?" 

He  replied,  "I  don't  see  why  rats,  if  fat,  are  not  as  good  as 
squirrels.  Our  men  did  eat  mule  meat  at  Vicksburg;  but  it 
would  be  an  expensive  luxury  now."  1 

Private  sorrow  was  added  to  Davis's  public  burdens  in 
this  terrible  year  of  1864.  On  the  last  day  of  April  a  sad 
accident  occurred.  The  President  at  that  time  was  much 
exhausted  from  worry  and  loss  of  sleep,  though  he  insisted 
on  keeping  his  office  hours.  His  wife  fell  into  the  habit 
of  carrying  him  a  lunch  at  midday.  One  noontide  she  left 
her  children  playing  as  usual  while  she  went  about  her 
daily  errand.  Presently,  as  she  chatted  with  her  husband,  a 
terrified  servant  came  hurrying  to  tell  her  that  her  little 
son,  Joseph  Emory,  had  fallen  from  a  balcony  to  the  pave- 
ment below.  The  child  died  just  as  the  parents  reached  his 
side.  Jefferson  Davis  was  utterly  prostrated  for  some  hours. 
At  intervals,  he  was  heard  to  ejaculate,  "Not  mine,  O  Lord, 
but  thine!"  A  courier  came  with  a  dispatch,  but  he  would 
not  read  it.  "I  must  have  this  day  with  my  little  child," 
he  said.  The  next  morning  he  went  to  work  at  his  usual 
hour. 

The  Christian  resignation  with  which  he  took  this  blow 
was  in  keeping  with  his  deeply  religious  nature.  In  the 
ambitions  of  his  earlier  life  he  had  found  little  time  for 
formal  religion,  but  the  Civil  War  brought  to  a  nature  almost 
always  somberly  serious  a  new  sense  of  responsibility,  and 

1  Jones,   2,   175. 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  291 

in  1862  Jefferson  Davis  joined  St.  Paul's  Episcopal  Church 
in  Richmond.  He  had  been  born  a  Hard-Shell  Baptist. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  genuineness  of  his  faith,  and 
he  seems  to  have  spent  much  time  in  praying  for  the  success 
of  the  cause  in  which  all  his  hopes  were  engaged.  In  fact, 
he  was  credited  with  being  superstitious,  with  leaving  the 
outcome  to  Providence  when  he  frankly  did  not  know  what 
to  do.  A  famous  sentence  in  the  Examiner  illustrates  this 
tendency:  "We  find  the  President  standing  in  a  corner  telling 
his  beads,  and  relying  on  a  miracle  to  save  the  country."  x 
Jefferson  Davis,  in  his  religiousness,  was  thoroughly  rep- 
resentative of  the  South.  One  of  the  popular  misconceptions 
of  American  history  is  that  the  old  South  was  cavalier. 
It  is  true  that  there  was  always  a  cavalier  element  in  the 
South,  but  at  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  it  was  overshadowed 
by  puritanism.  The  slave  states  formed  one  of  the  most 
Christian  communities  in  the  world — that  is,  one  wherein 
orthodox  Christianity  was  sincerely  believed  in  by  an  over- 
whelming majority  of  the  inhabitants.  Perhaps  nowhere 
in  the  world  were  there  so  many  people  who  believed  that 
dancing  and  theater-going  were  cardinal  sins  as  in  the  South. 
Lee's  army  was  made  up  of  Baptists,  Methodists  and  Pres- 
byterians; it  was  the  most  religious  army  since  Cromwell's 
time.  Revivals  were  its  favorite  recreation.  It  swarmed 
with  preachers  serving  as  chaplains,  private  soldiers  and 
officers.  The  influence  of  religion  was  almost  universal.  Lee 
himself  was  anything  but  a  cavalier,  being  a  precisian  and  a 
churchwarden.  Jackson  was  a  deacon  of  the  straitest  sect. 
Nearly  all  of  the  other  Confederate  leaders  were  earnest 
church  members.  Some  of  them,  like  Ewell,  were  converted 
during  the  war.    Lee's  artillery  chief,  Pendleton,  was  a  West 

aMay   19,   1862. 


292  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Pointer  who  had  turned  parson.  Polk  was  a  bishop.  One 
might  expect  to  find  a  cavalier  spirit,  if  anywhere,  in  Stuart, 
the  strident  cavalryman  with  the  long  boots  and  the  waving 
plume.  No  such  thing.  Stuart  was  pious  and  a  prohibitionist. 
In  fact,  such  is  the  monotony  of  Confederate  virtue  that  one 
is  rather  relieved  to  run  across  that  open  and  avowed  sinner, 
Jubal  A.  Early,  whose  venerable  bald  head  and  patriarchal 
beard  did  not  keep  him  from  scandalizing  the  army  by  curs- 
ing with  great  force  and  fluency.  He  was  the  "horrible  ex- 
ample" of  the  Confederate  host. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  prayed  in  1862;  he  had  much  more 
occasion  to  pray  in  1864.  For  the  time  being  Lee  had 
stopped  the  Union  advance  in  the  East,  but  the  outlook  was 
most  menacing  in  the  West,  though  somewhat  improved  over 
December,  1863.  The  army  of  Tennessee  had  begun  to 
better  from  the  time  Johnston  took  command.  Recruits 
came  in,  absent  soldiers  trooped  back  to  the  colors,  and 
gradually  the  army  that  had  been  hopelessly  broken  at  Mis- 
sionary Ridge  once  again  became  an  efficient  fighting  force. 

But  it  faced  a  much  more  efficient  force  in  Sherman's 
army.  This  army  put  an  end  to  Bragg's  vision  of  a  Con- 
federate offensive  by  slowly  and  cautiously  advancing  south- 
ward. Johnston  had  no  natural  inclination  for  attack,  and 
as  Sherman  had  a  larger  army  than  his  own  and  always 
moved  behind  the  protection  of  trenches  he  found  no  op- 
portunity to  attack.  Nor  could  he  foil  Sherman  by  stand- 
ing on  the  defensive,  for  Sherman  moved  continually  around 
his  right  flank,  much  after  the  fashion  of  a  mole  going  around 
an  obstruction.  Thus  Johnston  was  forced  to  retreat  slowly 
to  keep  from  being  flanked  by  the  Union  general;  he  fell 
back  from  Sherman's  advance  skillfully  and  with  little  loss. 

Jefferson  Davis,  however,  could  not  understand  the  reason 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  293 

for  his  retreat.  For  months  he  had  heard  Bragg  talking  of 
an  offensive  in  the  West;  and  now  Johnston,  instead  of  mov- 
ing into  Tennessee,  was  retiring  into  Georgia.  It  began  to 
wear  on  his  nerves.  All  his  dislike  and  distrust  of  John- 
ston flared  up  into  sudden  life.  He  thought  that  Johnston 
was  once  more  showing  lack  of  enterprise,  throwing  away 
new  opportunities.  He  detested  retrograde  movements 
under  any  circumstances. 

Now,  Johnston  was  a  natural  retreater.  He  had  retreated 
from  Manassas  to  Yorktown  and  from  Yorktown  to  Rich- 
mond, and  he  might  have  continued  to  retreat  if  Lee  had 
not  insisted  on  battle.  Davis  had  lost  confidence  in  him  then 
and  had  never  fully  regained  it,  just  as  he  had  lost  con- 
fidence in  Beauregard  for  retreating  from  Shiloh  to  Corinth 
and  from  Corinth  to  Tupelo.  Although  he  had  appointed 
Johnston  to  the  Tennessee-Mississippi  command,  he  had 
done  so  with  a  mental  reservation.  His  lingering  distrust  of 
Johnston  had  been  confirmed  by  the  Vicksburg  campaign, 
the  unfortunate  outcome  of  which  he  attributed  to  John- 
ston rather  than  to  Pemberton.  He  believed  that  Johnston 
might  have  rescued  Pemberton  by  a  vigorous  effort,  that  he 
had  not  done  his  full  duty.  The  fact  that  Johnston  and 
Beauregard,  cautious  souls,  had  never  lost  armies  or  met 
with  serious  reverses  made  little  difference  to  him.  He  pre- 
ferred commanders  such  as  Pemberton  and  Bragg  who  stood 
their  ground  and  were  routed  or  captured  to  generals  who 
saved  themselves  by  retirements. 

Johnston,  at  Dalton,  Georgia,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
campaign,  commanded  about  60,000  men  against  the  110,000 
of  Sherman.  The  difference  between  the  Union  and  Con- 
federate armies  in  the  West  was  much  more  marked  than  in 
the  East.    Lee's  victories  had  filled  his  army  with  a  belief 


294  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

in  its  superiority,  but  the  army  of  Tennessee  had  been  so 
mishandled  that  its  confidence  was  lowered.  The  Union 
army  was  not  only  larger,  but  it  was  better  equipped,  better 
officered,  better  moraled.  In  fact,  Sherman's  army  was  the 
best  seen  on  the  Union  side  in  the  war  and  at  this  particular 
moment  the  best  in  the  world.  It  was  a  magnificent  mili- 
tary machine  commanded  by  one  of  the  greatest  generals  of 
modern  times.  The  chances  of  war,  therefore,  altogether 
favored  Sherman. 

Nevertheless,  the  Confederate  commander  conducted  a 
campaign  that  for  scientific  thrust  and  parry  has  seldom 
been  equaled.  Acting  purely  on  the  defensive,  Johnston 
was  all  that  could  be  desired — cool,  resourceful,  careful  of 
his  men,  impossible  to  outmaneuver.  The  situation  exactly 
suited  his  talents  and  brought  out  his  great  qualities.  He 
retreated,  but  so  skillfully  that  Sherman  gained  no  ad- 
vantage. The  rank  and  file,  accustomed  to  Bragg's  blunder- 
ing butcheries,  reacted  to  a  generalship  that  threw  away  no 
lives.  Presently,  the  Western  army  began  to  exhibit  one  of 
the  strangest  of  military  phenomena,  that  of  an  army  in  a 
prolonged  retreat  giving  evidence  of  a  steadily  rising  morale. 

There  was  constant  skirmishing  and  occasionally  an  en- 
gagement approaching  the  magnitude  of  a  battle.  At  Ken- 
nesaw  Mountain,  Sherman  suffered  a  sharp  repulse,  with 
considerable  loss.  Yet  he  went  forward  slowly,  outflanking 
Johnston  from  position  to  position.  Johnston  had  either  to 
retreat  or  assault  Sherman's  trenches.  Very  properly,  he 
continued  to  fall  back. 

His  slow  and  uninterrupted  retreat  now  seriously  alarmed 
Davis.  If  Georgia  were  occupied  by  the  enemy  the  Confed- 
eracy would  fall.  On  May  18,  he  telegraphed  Johnston  that 
a  dispatch  announcing  a  further  retirement  had  been  "read 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  295 

with  disappointment."  Johnston  replied,  "I  know  that  my 
dispatch  must  of  necessity  create  the  feeling  you  express. 
I  have  earnestly  sought  an  opportunity  to  strike  the 
enemy."  * 

By  this  time  Johnston  had  wisely  concluded  that  a  battle 
with  Sherman  was  out  of  the  question  and  that  the  only 
way  to  defeat  him  was  by  strategy.  Forrest  had  hit  upon 
the  proper  method  early  in  April,  when  he  suggested  to  John- 
ston the  advisability  of  throwing  a  large  force  of  cavalry  in 
Sherman's  rear,  in  order  to  capture  Nashville  and  cut  the 
Union  communications.  Johnston  now  began  to  urge  the 
government  to  take  this  step — to  concentrate  the  cavalry  in 
the  West  for  the  purpose  of  breaking  Sherman's  communica- 
tions and  forcing  him  to  retreat.  He  not  only  asked  this 
himself;  he  sought  to  enlist  political  support.  In  the  latter 
part  of  May,  Senator  Henry  of  Georgia  wrote  to  Seddon 
inquiring  if  it  would  not  be  a  good  move  to  send  Forrest  to 
cut  the  enemy's  communications. 

Seddon  indorsed  the  project,  but  unfortunately  he  no 
longer  had  much  influence.  The  request  was  referred  to 
Bragg,  the  arbiter.  Bragg  announced,  with  pedantic  vague- 
ness, that  the  movement  had  not  escaped  attention  and  it  was 
hoped  that  good  results  would  soon  be  heard  of.  Nothing 
was  done,  however.  Bragg  had  no  intention  of  accepting 
Johnston's  strategy.  He  patriotically  thirsted  for  the  over- 
throw of  the  enemy  but  malevolently  desired  the  fall  of 
Johnston. 

As  the  government  would  not  strike  at  Sherman's  supply 
railway,  the  retreat  went  on,  as  it  was  inevitable  that  it 
should.  Mid- June  came,  with  the  retirement  steadily  con- 
tinuing, and  Davis,  who  was  ignorant  of  the  realities,  was 

aO.  R.,  Series  I,  38,  Part  IV,   736. 


296  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

losing  all  patience  with  Johnston.  Bragg  was  satisfied,  for 
he  knew  that  Johnston  must  soon  forfeit  his  command. 

On  June  17,  the  military  adviser  took  his  first  open  step 
against  Johnston.  All  the  spring  he  had  been  proclaiming 
that  the  only  hope  for  the  Confederacy  was  an  offensive  cam- 
paign before  the  enemy  could  unite  his  various  armies.  Now 
he  sent  Davis  a  formal  note  enumerating  the  troops  at 
Sherman's  disposal,  with  this  commentary,  "Should  all  these 
troops  concentrate  on  the  army  of  Tennessee,  we  may  well 
apprehend  disaster.  As  the  entire  available  force  of  the 
Confederacy  is  now  concentrated  with  the  two  main  armies, 
I  see  no  solution  of  the  difficulty  but  in  victory  over  one  of 
the  enemy's  armies  before  the  combination  can  be  fully 
perfected."  * 

At  this  very  time,  Johnston  was  urging  in  dispatch  after 
dispatch  that  Forrest  be  sent  with  all  the  cavalry  in  the 
West  to  break  the  railroad  along  which  Sherman  was  advanc- 
ing, the  only  practicable  way  to  defeat  a  raid  that  was  de- 
veloping into  a  formidable  invasion.  If  Sherman's  com- 
munications were  broken  he  would  have  to  retreat  or  as- 
sault Johnston's  trenches,  with  every  probability  of  meeting 
with  disaster.  The  general  managed  to  impress  his  views  on 
the  leading  men  of  Georgia;  and  Howell  Cobb,  Davis's 
friend,  now  joined  in  the  request  that  Forrest's  cavalry  be 
employed  in  Sherman's  rear. 

Cobb  carried  some  weight  with  the  President,  but  unhap- 
pily Governor  Joseph  Brown  of  Georgia  added  his  appeal  to 
the  others.  Davis  detested  Brown,  and  with  very  good 
reason,  for  the  Georgia  governor  had  opposed  and  thwarted 
him  in  every  way.  Brown's  interference  strengthened  the 
President's  determination  not  to  give  Johnston  the  desired 

xO.  R.,  Series  I,  38,  Part  IV,  762. 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  297 

assistance.  He  replied  to  Brown  that  the  disparity  between 
the  opposing  armies  in  Georgia  was  less  than  elsewhere. 
(This  is  almost  exactly  the  language  used  by  Bragg.)  For- 
rest's command  was  already  operating  on  one  of  Sherman's 
lines,  he  added,  and  was  needed  for  the  defense  of 
Mississippi.1 

This  shows  that  at  the  end  of  June,  1864,  Jefferson 
Davis  was  unaware  of  the  seriousness  of  the  situation.  He 
thought  that  Sherman's  army  was  weaker  than  it  was  and 
that  Johnston's  was  stronger.  For  this  belief  Braxton  Bragg 
was  responsible,  for  he  had  deliberately  cultivated  it  for 
months;  and  yet  Davis  himself  is  much  to  blame  for  ac- 
cepting at  their  face  value  the  statements  of  a  man  who  had 
hopelessly  failed,  and  who  had  thus  every  reason  to  dis- 
credit his  successor.  We  forgive  crimes  in  great  men,  but 
not  stupidity;  and  in  the  extent  in  which  Jefferson  Davis 
relied  on  Bragg  there  was  sheer,  crass  stupidity. 

Johnston  made  numerous  appeals  to  Bragg,  as  well  as  to 
Davis,  for  Forrest's  aid,  repeating  that  he  was  not  strong 
enough  to  hold  back  Sherman.  He  was  appealing  to  the  man 
who  was  determined  on  his  overthrow.  On  June  27,  Bragg 
tartly  replied  that  there  was  no  cavalry  to  send  him,  that 
it  was  all  needed  elsewhere.  To  Davis  the  military  adviser 
wrote  that  there  was  no  way  to  reen force  Johnston — at 
least  from  Mississippi,  where  Johnston  had  better  return 
some  of  the  troops  he  had  drawn  rather  than  to  attempt  to 
draw  others.  This  message  confirmed  Davis  in  his  opinion 
that  Johnston  was  making  unreasonable  demands,  that  he 
had  force  enough  to  win  a  victory  if  he  would  only  use  it. 
By  this  time  Bragg  was  thinking  more  of  overthrowing  John- 
ston than  of  defeating  the  enemy,  or  he  would  never  have 

10.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  681. 


298  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

advanced  the  absurd  suggestion  that  the  general  ought  to 
send  back  a  part  of  his  small  army  to  Mississippi. 

Another  plea  from  Governor  Brown  for  Forrest's  cavalry 
brought  a  stinging  rebuke  from  Davis.  "Your  telegram  re- 
ceived. Your  dicta  cannot  control  the  distribution  of  troops 
in  different  parts  of  the  Confederate  states.  Most  men  in 
your  position  would  not  assume  to  decide  on  the  value  of  the 
services  to  be  rendered  by  troops  in  distant  positions."  1 

Was  this  not  a  message  of  evil  augury  to  send  to  a  poli- 
tician already  disaffected  to  the  government  and  capable  of 
doing  great  harm?  It  is  an  instance  of  Jefferson  Davis's 
essentially  passionate,  impolitic  nature.  Brown  replied,  and 
scored  in  his  reply,  "I  venture  to  predict  that  your  official 
estimates  of  Sherman's  numbers  are  as  incorrect  as  your 
official  calculations  of  Missionary  Ridge  were  erroneous."  2 

The  Georgia  governor,  however,  sought  to  find  a  more 
effective  means  of  awakening  the  President  to  a  sense  of 
reality  than  appeals  to  deaf  ears.  At  that  time  Senator 
B.  H.  Hill  happened  to  be  in  Georgia,  and  Hill  was  a  con- 
sistent supporter  of  Davis  and  as  close  to  him  as  any  other 
politician.  Knowing  this,  Brown  sent  for  him  on  the  last 
day  of  June  and  impressed  him  with  the  gravity  of  the  situa- 
tion and  the  absolute  necessity  of  having  Forrest  assail  the 
Union  communications.  The  next  day  the  senator  saw 
Johnston,  who  confirmed  all  that  Brown  had  said  and  de- 
clared that  Sherman  could  not  be  beaten  except  by  an  at- 
tack on  his  line  of  supply. 

Hill  consented  to  go  to  Richmond  and  make  a  direct 
appeal  to  the  President.  When  he  arrived  in  Richmond, 
he  found  Davis  raging  at  Johnston's  continuous  retreat  and 

10.  R.,  Series  I,  38,  Part  IV,  762. 

aO.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  II,  Supplement,  687. 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  299 

the  requests  for  more  troops  and  he  did  not  have  the  nerve 
to  attempt  to  undeceive  him.  He  telegraphed  Johnston  what 
was,  in  effect,  a  plea  for  him  to  fight  in  order  to  satisfy  the 
government:  "You  must  do  your  work  with  your  present 
force.    For  God's  sake  do  it." 

Bragg  had  fully  indoctrinated  Davis  with  the  idea  that 
Johnston  had  troops  enough  for  his  task.  As  day  after  day 
went  by  without  news  of  a  battle,  the  President's  anger 
grew  into  intense  irritability  and  obstinacy.  On  June  23, 
he  informed  Bragg  that  Johnston  must  be  notified  that  he 
could  have  no  more  troops  from  Alabama  and  Mississippi. 
In  fact,  the  President  was  still  attempting  to  keep  up  his 
system  of  garrisons  and  dispersed  forces  when  it  was  evident 
that  only  by  immediate  and  general  concentration  could  the 
main  armies  of  the  Union  be  met. 

Johnston  was  absolutely  right.  The  move  against  Sher- 
man's communications  offered  the  one  reasonable  hope  of 
success.  If  the  communications  were  broken,  Sherman 
would  have  to  retreat  and  the  lower  South  would  be  tem- 
porarily saved.  If  they  were  not  broken,  he  could  advance 
indefinitely.  The  trouble  was  that  his  supply  railway  was 
so  strongly  guarded  that  it  could  not  be  cut  by  less  than 
8,000  or  10,000  cavalry.  The  troops  were  available,  and 
Forrest  was  an  incomparable  leader  for  such  a  feat,  but 
to  concentrate  the  cavalry  in  the  West  meant  the  final  aban- 
donment of  Davis's  defensive  system  and  the  opening  of 
Alabama  and  Mississippi  to  Union  raids.  The  President, 
who  was  very  loath  to  take  this  step,  demanded  of  Johnston 
why  he  did  not  cut  the  railroad  with  the  cavalry  of  his  army. 
Johnston  replied  that  his  cavalry  was  not  able  to  cope  with 
Sherman's,  much  less  make  raids.  But  Davis,  bitterly  angry 
with  Johnston  and  convinced  that  he  did  not  fight  simply  be- 


300  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

cause  he  lacked  the  courage,  refused  to  send  the  cavalry 
and,  as  it  turned  out,  threw  away  the  one  last  chance  of  the 
South  to  win.  In  this  tragedy,  Braxton  Bragg  was  the  prin- 
cipal, Davis  the  unhappy  second. 

The  President,  who  would  not  take  the  risk  of  laying  open 
territory  to  the  enemy,  was  considering  taking  the  far  greater 
risk  of  attacking  Sherman's  superior  army.  It  was  evidently 
necessary  to  do  something.  With  every  mile  of  Sherman's 
advance  the  peril  of  a  complete  breakdown  grew.  Brown, 
now  wholly  at  odds  with  Davis,  ventured  on  a  degree  of  op- 
position to  the  government  that  bordered  on  treason.  He 
was  both  angry  and  disheartened.  He  hampered  the  gov- 
ernment at  every  turn,  refusing  food,  declining  to  allow  the 
use  of  the  state  railroads,  returning  a  negative  to  all  requests. 
At  the  moment  of  supreme  need  he  kept  thousands  of  able- 
bodied  men  out  of  the  army  in  order  to  form  his  state  force 
for  home  defense.  Some  of  this  militia  he  sent  on  a  short- 
term  loan  to  Johnston  when  Atlanta  was  endangered,  but 
the  recruits,  though  plucky,  were  of  no  great  value.  First 
and  last,  he  may  have  robbed  the  service  of  10,000  men,  of 
whom  it  stood  in  desperate  need. 

Sherman  was  so  encouraged  by  Brown's  defiance  of  Davis 
that  he  invited  the  governor  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  to  a 
conference  with  a  view  of  getting  Georgia  to  secede  from 
secessia.  Brown  and  Stephens,  however,  were  not  traitors 
and  they  declined.  Stephens  was  constitution  crazy.  Brown 
was  not  without  patriotism,  but  he  was  a  popularity  hunter 
and  imbued  with  a  hatred  for  Davis.  He  thought  that 
Georgia  had  made  enough  sacrifices  for  a  doomed  cause  and 
he  refused  to  make  others. 

Johnston  still  had  the  entire  confidence  of  the  army,  but 
as  he  fell  back  toward  middle  Georgia  the  farmers  began  to 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  301 

clamor  for  his  removal;  they  were  terrified  by  the  specter 
of  plunder  and  ruin  that  the  continued  advance  of  the  Union 
army  brought  them.  This  mistaken  outcry  strengthened 
Davis  in  his  dawning  determination  to  remove  Johnston  and 
replace  him  with  a  man  who  would  fight,  because  it  made 
him  believe  that  such  a  move  would  not  be  altogether  un- 
popular. It  was  the  end  toward  which  Bragg  had  labored 
ever  since  Johnston  succeeded  to  the  command  of  the  army. 

On  July  14,  Davis  returned  a  final  answer  to  Johnston's 
demands  for  Forrest's  assistance.  He  refused,  and  gave 
petty  reasons  for  his  refusal.  If  cavalry  were  withdrawn 
from  Alabama  the  Tombigbee  Valley  would  be  laid  open; 
and  if  from  Mississippi,  Selma  and  the  arsenals.  On  that 
very  day  the  President  was  preparing  for  the  final  step,  for 
he  sent  an  inquiry  to  the  adjutant-general  as  to  the  original 
size  of  Johnston's  army,  the  number  of  reen  for  cements  sent 
him,  and  the  size  of  the  army  at  its  last  return.  This  was 
done  in  order  to  verify  Bragg's  assertion  that  Johnston  had 
had  a  large  army  at  the  opening  of  the  campaign  and  that 
his  losses,  even  without  battle,  had  been  large.  Hood,  one 
of  Johnston's  corps  commanders,  had  sent  Bragg  this  in- 
formation. There  were  no  very  accurate  reports  as  to  the 
size  of  the  army  at  Dal  ton,  but  Davis  was  satisfied  that 
Bragg  was  right  and  that  the  losses  had  been  considerable. 

Johnston  had  now  no  friend  at  court.  Bragg  hated  him, 
and  Davis  and  Bragg  together  had  convinced  Seddon,  his 
original  supporter,  that  he  was  no  general.  Seddon's  letters 
show  this.  Not  a  voice  was  raised  in  his  behalf  except  that 
of  the  newspapers,  for  it  was  already  bruited  that  Johnston 
was  to  be  relieved  and  the  newspapers  exhibited  great  un- 
easiness.   They  thoroughly  distrusted  Davis's  judgment. 

Davis  had  made  up  his  mind  to  remove  Johnston,  but  he 


302  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

had  not  decided  on  his  successor.  That  most  difficult  prob- 
lem gave  him  sleepless  nights  and  nervous  headaches.  He 
need  not  have  troubled  himself,  however.  Bragg  had  long 
before  made  the  decision  for  him,  though  the  military  adviser 
played  out  the  comedy  of  a  pretended  examination  of  the 
military  situation.  Bragg  went  to  Atlanta  to  get  firsthand 
information  for  the  President,  arriving  there  on  July  13,  a 
coincidence  that  almost  seems  to  justify  superstition.  His 
real  errand  was  to  make  arrangements  for  the  transfer  of 
the  army  to  another.  He  was  not  wholly  moved  by  per- 
sonal animus,  but  partly  by  the  retreat  itself.  His  intelli- 
gence was  not  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  appreciate  John- 
ston's strategy.  He  was  essentially  a  fighting  soldier  who 
hated  trenches,  withdrawals  and  all  other  methods  of  avoid- 
ing shock.  In  a  way,  indeed,  he  was  a  heroic  soul,  for  he 
was  a  fighter  who  did  not  like  to  fight.  It  always  took  him 
agonizing  efforts  to  screw  his  nerve  up  to  fight,  and  yet  he 
fought.  Fearing  the  enemy  greatly,  he  stood  his  ground — 
usually,  with  unfortunate  results. 

Yet  his  main  motive  was  hatred  of  Johnston,  who  had 
succeeded  him  and  who  was  as  popular  as  he  was  unpopular. 
He  designated  Hood  for  the  command  of  the  army  since 
he  could  not  hope  to  have  it  himself.  Bragg  had  become 
thick  with  Hood  while  the  latter  was  at  Richmond  con- 
valescing from  a  desperate  wound  received  at  Chicka- 
mauga.  The  fierce  soldier,  albeit  minus  a  leg,  was  an 
object  of  interest  to  the  girls  of  the  capital,  who  greatly 
petted  him.  Hood  saw  much  of  the  President,  too,  and 
rode  out  with  him.  He  learned  from  Bragg  how  to  ap- 
proach Davis  acceptably.  Once  Davis,  in  a  fit  of  anger, 
denounced  some  officers  to  Hood,  who  turned  suddenly  and 
said,  "Mr.  President,  why  don't  you  come  and  lead  us  your- 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  303 

self?  I  would  follow  you  to  the  death."  This  was  so  exactly 
in  Bragg's  style  that  it  must  have  been  pleasing  to  the 
harassed  Davis,  who  still  liked  to  fancy  himself  a  great 
soldier.  At  all  events,  Hood  left  Richmond  a  lieutenant 
general  and  it  was  rumored  at  the  time  that  he  was  con- 
sidered for  the  command  of  the  Western  army. 

Davis  would  not  make  such  a  move  without  consulting 
Lee.  On  July  12,  he  told  the  latter,  "General  Johnston 
has  failed,  and  there  are  strong  indications  that  he  will 
abandon  Atlanta.  Seems  necessary  to  relieve  him.  What 
think  you  of  Hood?"  The  next  day  Davis  sent  a  second 
message  stating  that  Johnston  had  an  ample  cavalry  force 
and  that  he  was  able  to  stop  Sherman  but  would  not. 

Unhappily,  Lee  did  not  give  an  outright  answer.  He  so 
feared  doing  Hood  an  injustice  that  he  refrained  from  say- 
ing that  his  former  subordinate  was  unfit  to  command  an 
army,  though  he  implied  it.  He  wrote,  "It  is  a  bad  time  to 
release  the  commander  of  an  army  situated  as  that  of  Ten- 
nessee. We  may  lose  Atlanta,  and  the  army  too.  [An  ex- 
cellent forecast.]  Hood  is  a  bold  fighter.  I  am  doubtful 
as  to  other  qualifications  necessary."  And  again,  "Hood 
is  a  good  fighter,  very  industrious  on  the  battlefield,  careless 
off,  and  I  have  no  opportunity  of  judging  of  his  action  when 
the  whole  responsibility  rested  upon  him.  I  have  a  high 
opinion  of  his  gallantry,  earnestness  and  zeal."  *  This  un- 
satisfactory opinion  did  not  turn  Davis  from  his  determina- 
tion, though  he  might  have  seen,  if  he  had  read  between  the 
lines,  that  Lee  credited  Hood  with  all  the  qualifications  of  a 
general  but  brains.  But  possibly  Davis  believed  that  Bragg 
at  Atlanta  would  supply  the  brains.  What  he  wanted  was 
a  man  of  action  to  carry  out  Bragg's  plans.    There  are  strong 

1  Lee's  Dispatches  (Freeman),  282,  284. 


304  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

indications  that  both  he  and  Bragg  expected  the  latter  to  be 
the  real  commander,  with  Hood  as  figurehead.  Thus, 
Bragg  would  be  restored  malgre  the  nation  and  the  nation's 
will. 

Bragg,  on  his  arrival  at  Atlanta,  telegraphed  Davis  that 
the  signs  pointed  to  the  evacuation  of  that  city.  It  was  on 
this  point  that  Davis  took  his  stand;  in  fact,  he  had  ar- 
ranged with  Bragg  before  his  departure  that  this  was  to 
be  the  test  demanded  of  Johnston.  The  President  had 
asked  assurances  of  the  commander  that  he  would  fight  to 
keep  Atlanta,  the  most  important  railway  junction  in  the 
lower  South.  Johnston  returned  no  definite  reply.  Now 
Bragg  reported  that  Atlanta  was  to  be  given  up,  later  adding, 
"Our  army  depleted.  10,000  less  than  the  return  of  June  10. 
I  find  but  little  to  encourage."  The  military  adviser  had  not 
gone  to  Atlanta  to  find  anything  encouraging,  and  naturally 
he  found  what  he  sought. 

Bragg  was  constantly  with  Hood,  but  saw  little  of  John- 
ston. Hood  declared  that  Johnston  had  lost  several  chances 
to  fight  battles  at  an  advantage  and  that  the  army  had 
diminished  by  20,000  men.  He,  Hood,  had  urged  battle  so 
often  that  he  had  gained  the  reputation  of  being  reckless.1 

Bragg  informed  Davis  that  the  situation  could  be  im- 
proved in  only  one  way,  by  offensive  action.  He  had  been 
saying  the  same  thing  ever  since  February.  He  was  candid 
enough,  however,  to  add  a  premise  which,  to  a  cooler  mind, 
would  have  condemned  his  conclusion:  "Position,  numbers 
and  morale  are  now  with  the  enemy."  Yet,  in  spite  of  that 
terrible  trinity  of  disadvantages,  he  counseled  attack,  and 
Hood  agreed.  "The  morale,"  Bragg  went  on,  "though  dam- 
aged, of  course  [by  the  retreat  from  Dalton]  is  still  good." 

1  O.  R.,  Series  I,  38,  Part  V,  879. 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  305 

One  might  infer  from  Bragg's  tone  that  the  morale  when  he 
himself  resigned  soon  after  Missionary  Ridge  was  high,  and 
that  it  had  been  lowered  by  Johnston's  cautious  methods. 
He  underestimated  Sherman's  strength  and  gave  the  impres- 
sion that  there  was  a  reasonable  chance  of  defeating  the 
Union  army  in  battle.  He  suggested  Hood  if  a  new  com- 
mander was  to  be  appointed,  which  was  a  mere  formality. 
His  postscript  is  instructive,  as  it  shows  his  rancor  against 
Johnston:  "As  General  J.  has  not  sought  my  advice,  nor 
even  afforded  me  a  fair  opportunity  of  giving  my  opinion,  I 
have  obtruded  neither  upon  him.  Such  will  continue  to  be 
my  course."  i 

Altogether,  Davis  was  ill-served  by  his  agent.  It  would 
hardly  be  the  truth  to  say  that  Bragg  intentionally  misled 
him,  because  Bragg  himself  was  probably  misled  by  Hood, 
who  was  in  turn  overcome  by  ambition  and  impatience  to 
fight.  The  net  result  was  that  Jefferson  Davis  conceived  a 
wholly  misleading  view  of  the  situation  and  serenely  plunged 
down  into  Avernus.  The  President  himself  was  very  blame- 
worthy in  the  matter.  He  had  put  Bragg  in  a  false  position 
by  sending  him  on  such  a  mission,  for  it  is  too  severe  a  test 
of  human  nature  to  set  up  a  derided  failure  as  the  judge 
of  a  beloved  successor.  It  was  natural  for  Bragg  to  wish  to 
visit  on  Johnston  the  bitter  humiliation  he  himself  had 
suffered.  Davis  should  never  have  given  such  an  oppor- 
tunity to  so  interested  a  party.  He  should  have  sent  an 
unbiased  investigator  to  Atlanta. 

The  result  of  Davis's  confidence  in  his  military  adviser, 
wedded  to  Bragg's  fundamentally  unsound  judgment  and 
his  animosity  against  Johnston,  was  a  decision  to  stake 
the  future  of  the  country  on  the  chance  of  winning  a  victory 

10.  R.,  Series  I,  38,  Part  V,  880. 


306  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

by  hurling  an  inferior  force  on  a  superior  army  protected 
by  trenches.  It  was  simply  throwing  dice  with  Fate,  and 
with  Fate's  loaded  dice.  There  was  no  rational  hope  of 
success,  but  the  actors  in  the  tragedy  were  all  irrational. 
Davis  was  warped  by  Bragg's  long-continued  insinuations 
against  Johnston  and  by  his  own  distrust  of  the  officer; 
Bragg  was  daft  with  rancor;  and  Hood  was  beside  him- 
self with  the  ambition  of  showing  himself  another  Jackson. 
Yet  Davis  was  assailed  by  misgivings  at  the  last  moment  and 
he  asked  Bragg  if  it  would  not  be  best,  after  all,  to  put  For- 
rest on  Sherman's  communications.  Bragg's  reply,  on  July 
15,  is  a  model  of  fatuousness:  "I  am  decidedly  opposed,  as 
it  would  perpetuate  the  past  and  present  policy  which  he 
[Johnston]  has  advised  and  now  sustains.  Any  change 
will  be  attended  with  some  objections.  This  one  could  do 
no  good."  x 

This  message  decided  the  matter.  One  mission  with  which 
Bragg  was  charged  was  to  sound  Hood  on  his  willingness 
to  attack  Sherman:  Davis  wished  to  make  certain  on  this 
score.  Hood  informed  Bragg  of  his  entire  confidence  in 
his  ability  to  defeat  Sherman,  which  assurance  settled  the 
last  doubt.  What  more  impressive  lesson  could  there  be  of 
the  value  of  self-confidence!  When  Bragg  telegraphed 
Davis  that  Hood  was  unafraid,  the  President  resolved  to 
give  him  the  command.  The  consummation  toward  which 
Bragg  and  Hood  had  worked  so  long  had  been  reached. 

On  July  17,  Adjutant-General  Cooper  telegraphed  John- 
ston that  as  he  had  failed  to  stop  the  advance  of  the  enemy 
and  expressed  no  confidence  in  his  ability  to  defeat  them 
he  was  relieved  and  Hood  was  appointed  in  his  place. 
Johnston  wept  tears  of  mortification  in  secret,  but  he  was 

xO.  R.,  Series  I,  52,  Part  IV,  707. 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  307 

too  patriotic  to  find  consolation  in  reflecting  on  the  certain 
doom  of  his  successor.  The  news  of  the  change  was  heard 
through  the  country  with  dismay,  though  there  was  a  faint 
hope  in  some  quarters  that  a  genius  had  come  to  light  in 
the  person  of  Hood.  The  newspapers  that  did  not  condemn 
the  President's  action  were  non  committal.  The  atmosphere 
of  the  Confederacy  was  tense  with  anxiety,  as  the  people 
recognized  that  a  step  had  been  taken  which  would  be  fol- 
lowed by  decisive  victory  or  decisive  defeat.  Fear  out- 
weighed hope. 

For  the  first  time  in  the  war,  Jefferson  Davis  had  ven- 
tured to  make  a  radical  appointment.  His  former  selec- 
tions for  high  places  had  been  soldiers  of  reputation,  such 
as. Lee,  the  two  Johnstons,  and  Beauregard,  or  personal 
friends,  such  as  Bragg  and  Pemberton.  Now  he  picked 
out  a  young  man  he  had  known  but  slightly.  He  had  de- 
cided to  discover  talent. 

John  B.  Hood  was  an  officer  of  rising  reputation.  He 
had,  of  course,  the  one  thing  needful — a  diploma  from  West 
Point.  Fame  had  come  to  him  as  the  head  of  a  Texas 
brigade,  the  best  in  the  service.  He  had  risen  as  far  as 
division  general  under  Lee,  had  then  been  so  lucky  as  to 
win  Bragg's  friendship,  and  was  successively  made  corps 
general  and  army  commander.  His  chief  exploit  as  leader 
of  a  corps  had  been  to  criticize  Johnston's  strategy:  he  was 
now  to  have  an  opportunity  to  prove  Johnston  wrong.  A 
born  fighter,  a  perfect  animal  organism  without  knowledge 
of  fear,  he  was  little  affected  by  wounds  that  would  have 
killed  men  of  less  superabundant  vitality.  In  appearance,  as 
in  character,  he  was  the  typical  Nordic  fighting  man,  with  his 
stalwart  presence,  his  blue  eyes  and  his  long  golden  beard. 
He  might  have  been  Cceur  de  Lion  reincarnated.    It  shows 


308  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

how  unerringly  race  tells  that  in  the  last  crisis  of  the  Con- 
federacy, when  a  fighter  was  demanded,  the  choice  fell  on 
this  pure-blooded  Nordic,  this  descendant  of  the  viking  past. 

The  corps  and* division  generals  received  the  new  com- 
mander with  silent  dismay;  he  had  not  impressed  them  as 
a  genius.  Hardee,  who  had  been  considered  a  second  time 
for  the  command,  felt  the  indignity  of  serving  under  a 
young  and  inexperienced  man.  Having  no  confidence  in 
Hood  and  Hood's — or  Bragg's — aggressive  policy,  the  gen- 
erals could  not  lend  hearty  cooperation  to  the  butchery  they 
saw  was  pending.  Indeed,  the  corps  generals,  including 
Hood,  asked  the  President  not  to  make  a  change  of  com- 
manders in  such  a  crisis,  but  Davis. replied  that  the  act  could 
not  be  undone.    Then  Hood  accepted  the  charge. 

It  was  Bragg's  theory  that  Johnston  had  injured  the 
morale  of  the  army  by  keeping  it  behind  trenches.  Ap- 
parently, he  did  not  reflect  that  Sherman  had  not  lowered 
the  Union  morale  by  using  trenches;  Sherman  was  one  of 
the  first  great  masters  of  trench  warfare.  Bragg  was  of  the 
impression  that  the  tone  of  the  army  of  Tennessee  would  be 
improved  by  another  bleeding;  he  did  not  consider  that  it 
was  an  army  that  had  suffered  all  things  because  of  bad 
generalship  and  had  hoped  for  nothing  until  Johnston  came 
to  command  it. 

Bragg  and  Hood  now  arranged  for  an  attack  on  the 
enemy,  which  took  place  on  July  22.  The  Union  troops  were 
driven  from  some  rows  of  trenches,  but  the  Confederate 
losses,  as  might  have  been  foreseen,  were  much  the  greater. 
Hood  claimed  a  victory  and  Bragg  wrote  Davis  that  the 
moral  effect  of  the  battle  had  been  admirable  and  that  the 
enemy  had  suffered  more  than  the  Southerners.  "He  was 
badly  defeated  and  completely  failed  in  one  of  his  bold 


THE  MILITARY  GAMBLE  309 

flanking  movements,  heretofore  so  successful."  But  the 
fiction  that  a  victory  had  been  gained  could  not  be  kept  up, 
for  Sherman  was  closing  in  on  Atlanta  from  all  sides.  Bragg 
now  went  away  to  Alabama,  possibly  repelled  by  Hood, 
possibly  prophetic  of  coming  events.  He  had  succeeded  in 
his  design:  he  had  overthrown  Johnston.  Only  the  Con- 
federacy was  to  fall  with  Johnston. 

Sherman  continued  his  flanking  movements,  and  Hood, 
after  several  more  engagements,  found  himself  unable  to 
check  them.  At  the  beginning  of  September,  Sherman 
reached  the  railroads  behind  Atlanta,  and  Hood  was  forced 
to  give  up  the  town  after  another  fruitless  fight.  He  sent 
word  to  Davis  that  the  loss  of  Atlanta  was  immaterial,  but 
the  news  flashed  through  the  South  and  the  world  that  the 
great  Confederate  strategic  point  had  fallen. 

The  country  was  raving.  The  press  and  the  public  had 
witnessed  Hood's  substitution  for  Johnston  with  grave  mis- 
givings. Dumbfounded  consternation  passed  into  wild  de- 
nunciation over  the  defeat  of  the  army  and  the  loss  of 
Atlanta.  In  that  moment  of  national  agony,  Jefferson  Davis 
was  really  repudiated  by  the  Southern  people. 


XIII 

WANTED  A  CROMWELL 

JEFFERSON  DAVIS  had  failed.  It  is  beside  the 
question  to  argue  whether  he  had  failed  well  or  ignobly, 
whether  another  in  his  place  would  have  done  better  or 
worse.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had  made  a  great  and  cred- 
itable effort,  even  though  it  had  been  in  vain.  Still  he  had 
failed  and  could  not  be  expected  to  do  aught  but  go  on  failing 
to  the  end.  But  for  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
with  which  the  Confederacy  had  burdened  itself,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  Davis  would  have  been  superseded  after 
the  fall  of  Atlanta — a  referendum  would  have  retired  him 
overwhelmingly — but  the  constitution  kept  him  in  power 
despite  his  mistakes  and  the  will  of  the  people.  If  the 
South  was  to  be  saved,  Davis  must  be  set  aside  for  some  one 
whom  the  people  trusted  sufficiently  to  follow.  There  was 
but  one  possible  hope,  and  that  was  a  military  dictatorship. 
Yet  for  this  a  revolution  would  be  necessary,  a  radical  revo- 
lution within  the  conservative  secession  revolution.  The  sole 
question  was  whether  this  last-hope  revolution  would  occur, 
or  whether  the  country  would  quietly  perish  under  its  con- 
stitutional authorities. 

Jefferson  Davis  had  done  his  best,  and  that  had  been  a 
great  deal.  He  had  not  been  able,  however,  to  seize  those 
chances  on  which  the  success  of  the  South  depended.  He 
had  not  invaded  the  North  when  invasion  promised  much; 

310 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  311 

on  the  defensive  he  had  not  employed  the  interior  lines  of 
communication  to  advantage;  he  had  not  bought  up  cotton 
and  exported  it  in  the  early  period;  he  had  not  approached 
Europe  with  tempting  offers;  he  had  not  mobilized  the 
negroes  to  recruit  his  waning  armies;  he  had  made  disastrous 
appointments  to  high  command. 

Such  is  the  indictment  of  Davis:  it  has  been  often  made 
and  is  familiar.  What  is  less  known  is  the  much  that  he 
laboriously  and  bravely  accomplished.  It  is  the  story  of  a 
national  patching-out  seldom  equaled;  of  turning  a  mob 
into  an  army;  of  raking  a  country  without  gunneries  for 
arms  and  equipment;  of  building  homemade  warships  out 
of  scrap  iron  and  of  buying  a  navy  in  Europe  sub  rosa; 
of  making  some  sort  of  transportation  system  out  of  a  series 
of  one-horse  railroads;  of  improvising  administrative  depart- 
ments without  buildings  and  officials;  of  conducting  a  great 
war  on  fiat  currency;  of  getting  food  and  clothing  for  sol- 
diers by  impressment  and  taxes  in  kind;  of  manufacturing 
munitions  without  chemicals;  of  so  juggling  as  to  have  effi- 
cient rule  without  fatally  violating  states'  rights;  of  making 
bricks  without  straw.  Such  are  some  of  the  counts  to  the 
credit  of  Jefferson  Davis. 

In  the  autumn  of  1864,  the  Southern  people  thought  only 
of  the  mistakes,  not  the  accomplishments.  The  country 
was  perishing;  the  cause  was  visibly  failing.  Jefferson 
Davis,  still  at  the  head  of  the  government,  if  discredited,  had 
to  think  of  something  to  do.  He  had  again  to  take  up  his 
weary  burden.  The  situation  had  to  be  faced.  What  would 
he  do? 

With  all  his  dislike  of  Johnston,  the  President  could  not 
fail  to  see  that  Hood  had  not  bettered  matters  by  losing 
several  battles  and  10,000  men.    Accordingly,  he  made  his 


312  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

third  important  trip  of  the  war  in  September,  1864,  visiting 
Hood's  camp  in  Georgia  and  consulting  the  general.  The 
visit  was  marked  by  a  disquieting  incident.  Once  while  the 
President  was  reviewing  the  troops,  he  was  greeted  with 
cries  of  "Give  us  General  Johnston  I"1  The  tumult  did 
not  last  long,  but  it  revealed  the  temper  of  the  army. 
Hood  offered  to  resign,  but  Davis  would  not  accede.  Beaure- 
gard was  made  head  of  the  department,  and  Hood  was  con- 
tinued in  command  of  the  army.  Davis  no  longer  believed 
in  him,  but  he  was  too  obstinate  to  remove  a  man  whom  he 
had  elevated  against  the  will  of  the  country. 

New  plans  had  to  be  devised.  By  this  time  Hood  had  had 
enough  of  attacking  Sherman;  and,  much  too  late,  John- 
ston's despised  strategy  was  adopted.  It  was  decided  that 
Hood  should  march  northward  and  destroy  Sherman's  com- 
munications. Most  imprudently,  the  President  advertised 
the  plan  in  a  speech  at  Macon,  Georgia,  made  by  him  in  an 
effort  to  rally  the  ebbing  spirits  of  the  people.  He  went  on 
to  Montgomery,  speaking  along  the  way  to  unenthusiastic 
crowds  thoroughly  weary  of  the  war. 

Sherman  was  troubled  for  only  a  moment  by  the  threat 
against  his  rear.  He  advanced  toward  Hood,  who  declined 
to  give  battle  and  withdrew  to  the  north.  Hood  believed  that 
the  destruction  of  the  Union  communications  might  force  a 
retreat.  Unfortunately,  the  supply  railroad,  so  all-important 
while  Sherman  was  in  the  mountains,  no  longer  mattered 
now  that  he  had  reached  the  great  grainfields  and  had  only 
to  march  to  the  seacoast  to  meet  a  provisioning  fleet.  So 
when  Hood  began  to  tear  up  the  railway,  Sherman  began, 
undisturbed,  his  descent  to  the  sea. 

Hood's  conduct  was  that  of  distraction.     He  who  so 

*J.  B.  Hood,  Advance  and  Retreat,  253. 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  313 

shortly  before  had  been  confident  of  his  ability  to  beat  Sher- 
man now  thought  that  resistance  to  the  latter  was  hopeless. 
His  only  plan  was  to  push  into  Tennessee  and  attack  the 
Union  garrisons  there  on  the  chance  that  Sherman  would 
be  forced  to  return  north  to  protect  them.  It  was  the  old 
plan  of  the  spring — an  invasion  of  Tennessee — essayed  un- 
der conditions  seldom  paralleled  in  war.  A  defeated  gen- 
eral was  moving  away  from  the  enemy,  leaving  them  un- 
opposed, in  order  to  invade  the  enemy  country.  The 
movement  was  comic-opera  generalship.  Nothing  could 
be  accomplished  by  driving  the  Union  garrisons  out  of 
Tennessee,  for  they  would  immediately  return  on  the  in- 
evitable Confederate  retreat.  To  hold  the  state  permanently 
was  now  unthinkable. 

Davis's  enemies  charged  him  with  concocting  this  scheme. 
The  charge  has  this  much  probability,  that  Hood's  move- 
ment was  the  offensive  that  Bragg  had  urged  in  the  spring 
and  that  the  President  desired  to  have  attempted.  Yet 
Hood  specifically  declares  that  the  plan  was  his  and  that 
Davis  neither  suggested  it  nor  approved  of  it.  He  states 
that  Davis  wanted  a  battle  fought  on  the  edge  of  Tennessee, 
thinking  that  the  army  was  still  strong  enough  to  oppose 
Sherman.  If  this  statement  is  true,  Hood  moved  into  Ten- 
nessee in  order  to  avoid  the  battle  and  to  do  something, 
since  he  had  to  do  something. 

He  was  probably  right  in  leaving  Sherman,  for  the  wreck 
of  an  army  he  now  commanded  could  have  accomplished 
little  by  merely  dogging  the  footsteps  of  the  Union  host. 
The  one  thing  that  promised  anything  at  all  was  a  feint 
against  Tennessee,  to  be  followed  by  a  rapid  shifting  of  the 
army  to  Richmond  in  concert  with  a  general  concentration 
of  all  available  troops  at  that  point.    Lee  then  might  have 


314  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

been  able  to  attack  Grant  with  a  hope  of  success.  This  was 
the  South's  only  possibility  of  victory  in  the  autumn  of 
1864.    But  it  was  a  forlorn  hope. 

Lee,  however,  was  too  much  occupied  with  his  own  army 
to  formulate  such  a  plan  and  Hood  was  left  to  his  devices. 
With  Forrest's  efficient  aid — for  Forrest,  much  too  late, 
had  been  ordered  to  join  the  main  army — Hood  advanced 
toward  Nashville.  But  the  Confederates  marched  with  a 
prevision  of  doom  and  only  out  of  a  devoted  sense  of  duty; 
and  the  corps  generals  threw  away  an  opportunity  to  win  a 
victory  over  a  Union  detachment  moving  to  Nashville.  The 
Unionists  took  up  a  strong  position  at  Franklin,  and  the 
unhappy  Southern  leader  could  think  of  nothing  but  one  of 
his  costly  assaults  on  trenches.  This  attack  was  more  costly 
than  any  before.  The  unfortunate  Confederates,  sent  by 
wretched  generalship  up  a  steep  hill  against  entrenched 
troops  armed  with  modern  artillery  and  repeating  rifles, 
were  mowed  down  by  thousands;  among  those  who  fell 
was  the  brilliant  and  devoted  Cleburne.  Seldom  have  sol- 
diers shown  greater  bravery  and  discipline  than  the  South- 
erners at  Franklin,  for  they  were  without  hope  and  knew 
that  they  were  commanded  by  one  now  little  better  than  an 
imbecile.  They  even  won  a  victory,  since  they  succeeded  in 
driving  off  the  Unionists  in  the  end,  but  it  was  the  hollow- 
est  of  victories. 

Hood  continued  his  insanity  by  advancing  to  Nashville 
and  taking  up  a  position  confronting  a  larger  army  under 
Thomas.  Here  he  remained  for  some  time,  though  he  had 
no  intention  of  making  an  attack.  It  is  probable  that  he 
had  ceased  to  think  at  all.  Thomas  made  his  preparations 
with  deliberation  and  then  proceeded  to  destroy  his  ad- 
versary.   The  Confederates  were  utterly  routed  and  were  in 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  315 

a  desperate  position,  north  of  the  Tennessee  River  and  desti- 
tute of  supplies  and  clothing.  The  cavalry  pursuing  them 
was  alone  as  numerous  as  the  fugitive  Southerners.  Never- 
theless, the  remnant  escaped  and  persisted  as  an  army  by 
an  exhibition  of  gameness  that  commands  all  admiration. 
The  story  of  Hood's  retreat  is  one  of  honor:  hopeless,  starv- 
ing, freezing,  trampling  barefoot  through  the  slush,  the  thin 
line  that  was  the  rear  guard  formed  time  and  again  across 
the  snowy  fields  and  drove  back  the  blue  masses  of  cavalry 
with  sheets  of  flame.  The  line  of  ragamuffins  could  not  be 
broken,  and  the  pitiful  handful  of  survivors  recrossed  the 
Tennessee  with  colors  still  flying.  Here  Hood  closed  a 
career  of  disaster  by  resigning.  The  gamble  had  turned  out 
in  favor  of  the  bank. 

In  December,  1864,  with  catastrophe  crowding  on 
catastrophe,  Davis's  health  utterly  failed  for  a  time.  For 
days  he  remained  in  his  house,  and  the  rumor  spread  in 
Richmond  that  he  was  at  the  point  of  death.  In  fact  his 
nerves  had  completely  collapsed.  He  was  shattered,  wracked 
with  neuralgia,  unable  to  work.  But  his  will  soon  rallied, 
and  by  Christmas  he  was  back  in  his  office,  haggard  and 
thinner  than  ever  but  master  of  himself.  It  was  observed, 
however,  that  he  shunned  all  business  except  appointments. 
With  the  inevitable  staring  him  in  the  face,  he  found  a  cer- 
tain respite  from  thought  in  plunging  into  routine  details, 
which  had  always  given  him  pleasure.  Plans  and  policies 
were  nothing  now  but  hopeless  dreams. 

The  people  were  demanding  a  new  leader  in  place  of  the 
President  who  had  failed.  It  is  the  worst  of  fallacies  to 
think  that  the  Southerners  were  less  ardent  in  their  desire 
for  independence  at  the  close  of  1864  than  in  1862.  Early 
in  the  war  there  was  still  a  strong  feeling  of  attachment  to 


316  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  old  Union  among  the  people,  a  certain  desire  for  recon- 
struction. By  1864  the  Southern  people  looked  on  them- 
selves as  a  nation  and  on  the  Unionists  as  foreign  invaders. 
The  loose  confederacy  of  slave  states  had  grown  into  a 
real  nationality  which  continued  until  1898  and  another  war, 
when  the  United  States  may  be  said  to  have  merged  into 
the  American  nation.  If  anything  was  needed  to  stimulate 
the  last  passions  of  patriotism  in  the  South,  it  was  supplied 
by  the  ravages  of  Sheridan  in  Virginia  and  Sherman  in 
Georgia.  The  Southern  people  were  not  conquered  by  this 
severity:  on  the  contrary  they  were  so  stimulated  by  fury 
that  the  war  would  have  burst  out  with  renewed  energy 
if  a  national  leader  had  come  forward. 

National  leader  there  was  in  the  person  of  Robert  E. 
Lee.  The  great  general  commanded  the  love  and  confidence 
of  the  South.  His  nobility  of  character  had  something  to 
do  with  his  immense  popularity,  but  his  success  much  more, 
for  almost  to  the  last  the  colors  of  his  army  waved  in 
triumph.  There  might  be  defeat  and  surrender  every- 
where else,  but  the  army  of  Virginia  under  his  leadership 
remained  proud  and  confident.  His  troops  still  calmly  be- 
lieved in  their  superiority  to  the  Union  foe. 

Yet  the  time  had  come  when  Lee  could  do  nothing  more 
as  a  mere  army  commander.  He  was  the  subordinate  of  a 
government  that  had  lost  the  trust  of  the  people.  Davis 
still  held  the  reins,  still  directed  affairs.  The  people  be- 
lieved in  Lee  as  fully  as  they  disbelieved  in  Davis.  But 
Lee  as  a  subordinate  was  somewhat  aloof  from  them:  the 
government  stood  between.  It  was  a  situation  which  offered 
much  to  an  ambitious  man  who  was  also  a  man  of  action, 
for  an  ambitious  man  would  not  have  been  troubled  by  con- 
stitutional scruples  in  such  a  crisis.    War  is  a  relentless  test 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  317 

and  has  no  respect  for  duly-constituted  authority:  its  sole 
criterion  is  efficiency.  Davis  had  failed  and  it  made  no 
difference  that  he  was  the  constitutional  ruler.  Lee  had 
succeeded  to  a  large  extent  in  his  individual  sphere  and  the 
hour  had  come  for  him  to  be  the  head  of  the  nation. 

If  he  had  demanded  the  dictatorship,  there  can  be  no 
question  but  what  the  act  would  have  been  rapturously  ap- 
plauded by  the  people.  Two  years  before  a  dictatorship  had 
been  talked  of  in  the  newspapers,  and  the  suggestion  was 
familiar  to  all.  The  talk  quickened  into  a  demand  for  a 
dictator  in  the  last  days  of  1864  as  it  became  increasingly 
evident  that  Jefferson  Davis,  whatever  his  merits,  v/as  wholly 
unable  to  meet  the  situation  that  was  arising  from  the  con- 
quest of  the  lower  South  by  Sherman.  It  was  a  situation 
somewhat  similar  to  the  crises  in  which  Julius  Caesar,  Crom- 
well and  Napoleon  had  made  themselves  the  head  of  the 
state.  A  dictatorship  would  be  illegal,  of  course — but  why 
consider  legality  with  the  invader  at  the  door! 

Everything  hinged  on  Lee's  attitude.  If  he  was  willing, 
the  coup  d'etat  would  be  easily  effected.  Indeed,  Congress 
might  be  enlisted  to  give  an  appearance  of  legality  to  it:  Con- 
gress would  have  gone  to  great  lengths  to  get  rid  of  the 
President.  There  is  a  tradition  that  William  C.  Rives, 
earlier  a  supporter  of  Davis,  actually  offered  Lee  the  dicta- 
torship in  the  name  of  a  congressional  junta  and  that  Lee 
refused  it.  If  this  is  true,  Congress  was  right.  A  dictator 
might  have  done  many  things  impossible  for  a  constitu- 
tional government:  seized  the  railroads,  impressed  food 
wherever  found,  drafted  thousands  of  negroes,  sacrificed 
everything  to  put  troops  in  the  field  by  early  spring. 

It  was  necessary,  however,  for  Lee  to  strike  for  himself, 
and  in  no  uncertain  terms.    He  could  not  inspire  the  nation 


318  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

to  the  supreme  effort  demanded  as  the  subordinate  of  the 
derided  President,  whom  the  nation  had  repudiated.  Lee 
would  not  raise  his  hand  against  the  Lord's  anointed,  and 
whatever  chance  the  South  had  passed  swiftly. 

There  are  two  gods  worshiped  by  the  great  spirits  of  this 
world,  the  God  of  Success  and  the  God  of  Virtue.  It  would 
be  a  mistake  to  imagine  that  the  God  of  Success  is  not  an 
exacting  master;  in  fact,  he  demands  every  surrender  from 
his  devotees,  including  that  of  honor.  But  he  gives  victory, 
great  and  glorious.  His  votaries  are  such  as  Csesar,  Crom- 
well and  Napoleon.  Those  who  bow  down  before  the  God 
of  Virtue  are  the  kind  of  Washington  and  Lee — men  who 
play  the  game  with  all  their  strength  but  strictly  by  the  rules. 
If  they  cannot  win  by  the  rules,  they  lose.  Often  they  lose, 
but  so  honorably  that  they  almost  make  failure  seem  better 
than  success.  Lee  could  not  have  brought  himself  to  over- 
throw the  government  and  seize  the  dictatorship  because 
to  do  that  would  have  been  against  his  nature,  all  sincerity 
and  loyalty.  Within  what  he  considered  the  exact  limits  of 
his  authority  and  his  duty  he  did  all  that  was  in  his  power 
to  win.  He  would  not  overstep  those  limits  an  inch.  If  the 
cause  could  not  succeed  under  its  authorized  government,  it 
must  fail.    His  life  was  his  country's;  his  honor  was  his  own. 

To  a  less  scrupulous  man  the  temptation  must  have  been 
great.  Congress  was  in  open  opposition  to  the  hard-driven 
President.  It  was  a  body  much  reviled  at  the  time  and 
neglected  since,  but  it  was  in  the  main  genuinely  patriotic 
and  well-meaning.  In  the  early  period  of  the  war  it  followed 
Davis's  recommendations  closely,  but  as  the  war  began  to 
go  against  the  South  its  attitude  changed.  It  was  long  in 
asserting  itself,  for  it  had  no  historical  position  comparable 
to  that  of  the  United  States  Congress,  of  which  it  was  but  a 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  319 

feeble  wraith.  The  Southern  body  was  the  creature  of  a  day, 
condemned  to  occupy  lodgings  in  the  Virginia  statehouse, 
where  the  Senate  was  poorly  accommodated:  it  was  separated 
from  the  spectators  merely  by  a  railing.  Thus  the  dignity 
that  tradition  and  proper  externals  supply  was  wanting. 

Davis  held  a  clear  majority  in  the  First  Congress.  But 
the  military  disasters  of  1863  and  the  growing  dissatisfaction 
of  the  people  were  reflected  in  the  election  of  the  Second 
Congress  in  the  year  of  Vicksburg.  Many  opponents  of 
Davis  were  chosen,  and  Davis's  majority  vanished.  From 
the  beginning  of  1864  until  the  end  of  the  war  he  faced  a 
steadily  rising  opposition  that  might  well  have  culminated 
in  a  revolution  if  a  leader  had  appeared. 

The  foremost  men  in  Congress  were  Robert  Toombs, 
Howell  Cobb  and  Robert  Barnwell;  and  next  to  them,  Wig- 
fall  of  Texas,  "fierce,  impatient,  incandescent;  Orr,  of  South 
Carolina,  an  excellent  man  in  the  committee-room,  but  as 
heavy  and  blundering  as  a  school-boy  in  his  speeches;  and 
Hill,  of  Georgia,  the  very  picture  of  smooth  and  plausible 
mediocrity,  inclining  to  the  administration  of  the  President, 
but  at  an  angle  nice  and  variable."  1 

In  the  House  of  Representatives  were  "Foote,  a  voluble 
debater,  but  afflicted  with  extravagance  and  a  colicky  deliv- 
ery; William  Porcher  Miles,  of  South  Carolina,  smooth, 
scrupulously  dressed,  a  master  of  deportment,  and  a  type  in- 
deed of  the  truest  cultivation;  Barksdale,  of  Mississippi,  the 
especial  friend  and  champion  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  leader  of  the 
administration  party  in  the  House,  a  small,  dark-featured 
man  who  spoke  vehemently;  James  Lyons,  of  Virginia,  who 
was  satisfied  with  the  shallow  reputation  of  the  'handsome 
member.'  " 

1  Pollard,  311. 


320  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Davis  was  not  very  close  to  Congress.  Cobb,  Barnwell 
and  Hill  were  in  his  confidence  to  some  extent  and  saw  him 
frequently;  but  the  ablest  men,  Toombs  and  Wigfall,  were  in 
opposition  and  the  minor  members  were  not  kept  well  in 
hand.  Opponents  were  not  conciliated.  The  most  galling 
adversary  was  Wigfall,  who  constituted  himself  the  especial 
champion  of  Joseph  E.  Johnston  and  directed  a  bitter  criti- 
cism of  the  government's  military  policy.  In  the  final  period, 
the  controversy  of  Davis  and  Johnston  over  the  operations 
in  Georgia  in  the  summer  of  1864  came  to  be  the  great  issue 
in  Southern  politics.  Davis's  most  dangerous  enemy  was 
Stephens,  the  Vice  President,  who  openly  denounced  the 
administration  in  speeches  that  did  much  to  spread  dis- 
satisfaction and  who  was  echoed  in  the  House  of  Represen- 
tatives by  Foote,  the  President's  lifelong  enemy. 

Stephens,  like  Lee,  was  a  worshiper  of  the  God  of  Virtue, 
but,  unlike  Lee,  he  was  an  insane  votary.  Lee's  attitude 
was  simply  that  of  absolute  loyalty  to  the  government  in 
whose  service  he  drew  his  sword.  Stephens  went  back  of 
the  government  to  the  constitution,  of  which  he  made  himself 
the  especial  guardian.  His  was  the  monomania  of  consti- 
tutional liberty.  In  his  devotion  to  the  letter  of  liberty  he 
was  willing  to  sacrifice  liberty  itself,  preferring  to  see  the 
cause  go  down  in  ruin  rather  than  sanction  an  unconstitu- 
tional enlargement  of  the  executive  power.  Or,  rather,  in 
his  doctrinaire  infatuation,  he  believed  that  strict  constitu- 
tionalism had  some  traumaturgic  virtue  by  means  of  which 
success  could  be  miraculously  compelled.  Was  the  cause 
languishing,  disaster  impending?  It  was  all  due  to  the 
autocracy  of  Jefferson  Davis,  the  illegal  conscription,  the 
Tax  in  Kind,  this  and  that  infraction  of  the  constitution;  and 
Stephens  had  a  witch  doctor's  nose  for  smelling  out  infrac- 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  321 

tions  of  the  constitution.  If  the  President  would  only  be 
strictly  constitutional,  the  people  would  rally  to  him  and  the 
cause  would  flourish! 

Needless  to  say,  this  was  insanity.  It  was  a  noble  mad- 
ness, however — one  sadly  needed  now — and  it  would  not 
have  been  without  its  value  but  for  its  desperate  unseason- 
ableness.  As  it  was,  Stephens  caused  the  government  more 
trouble  than  all  the  traitors  combined:  every  form  'of 
resistance  and  malingering  drew  encouragement  from  him. 
He  began  his  active  opposition  in  1862  with  the  conscription. 
He  declared  that  this  measure  was  both  illegal  and  un- 
necessary. He  seems  to  have  believed  that  a  simple  appeal 
to  the  people  would  have  immediately  brought  forward  an 
abundance  of  volunteers,  a  gross  fallacy.  In  fact,  the  fragile, 
embittered  Georgian,  like  many  other  men  of  intelligence  in 
civil  affairs,  was  totally  destitute  of  military  understanding. 
He  continued  to  go  about  making  speeches  against  the  draft 
— one  before  the  Georgia  legislature  in  March,  1864 — and 
seriously  embarrassed  the  authorities  in  executing  the  law. 
The  government  would  have  been  justified  in  imprisoning 
him,  his  activities  were  so  mischievous.  So  much  for  the 
wisdom  of  attempting  to  reconcile  Unionists  to  secession  by 
electing  one  of  them  Vice  President!  Policy,  in  thy  name 
what  idiocies  are  committed! 

In  Congress  and  out,  Stephens  continued  his  opposition 
to  the  government.1  Any  effort  at  strong  government  en- 
raged him,  for  he  could  not  understand  why  a  state  engaged 
in  a  struggle  for  existence  should  depart  in  the  least  from 
peace  methods.  In  a  speech  in  April,  1864,  against  the 
suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus,  he  declared  that  independ- 
ence was  of  no  value  without  liberty  and  that  if  he  must 

1  Louis  Pendleton,  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  296. 


322  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

have  a  master  he  cared  little  whether  that  master  was  North- 
ern or  Southern.1  The  habeas  corpus  was  suspended  for  the 
sufficient  reason  that  it  was  being  used  to  defeat  conscrip- 
tion and  rescue  dangerous  military  offenders.  Stephens's 
accusations  of  tyranny  injured  the  government  and  en- 
couraged malcontents  everywhere. 

Worst  of  all  was  his  continual  wailing  for  peace,  as  if 
peace  were  to  be  had  for  wailing.  He  believed,  in  his  in- 
fatuation, that  the  South  could  have  peace  whenever  it 
desired  it,  if  only  the  obstinate  and  perverse  Davis  would 
make  overtures.  Wearied  with  his  unending  demands  to 
open  negotiations,  the  President  permitted  him  to  men- 
tion peace  in  a  mission  he  was  sent  on  in  1863  about  the 
exchange  of  prisoners.  The  effort  was  a  complete  failure, 
as  the  Northern  government  made  no  response.  Worse, 
Stephens's  eager  babbling  revealed  to  the  astute  politicians 
in  Washington  the  deep  despondency  prevailing  in  the 
South.2  This  miscarriage  had  no  effect  on  the  Vice  Presi- 
dent: he  continued  to  propagate  the  belief  that  only  Davis's 
obstinacy  stood  between  the  country  and  peace,  an  idea  as 
false  as  it  was  mischievous.  Lastly,  his  black  pessimism, 
openly  displayed,  disheartened  every  one  who  came  within 
his  influence.  He  seems  never  to  have  had  much  hope  of 
success  and  completely  to  have  given  up  the  fight  early  in 
the  war.  What  kind  of  peace  he  hoped  for  it  is  impossible 
to  say,  for  he  was  incoherent,  but  it  appears  to  have  been 
nothing  but  a  return  to  the  Union  under  some  kind  of  vague 
compromise  agreement,  as  if  the  subject  of  slavery  could  be 
still  compromised  on! 

So  untrue  was  it  that  Jefferson  Davis  stood  in  the  way 

1  Jones,  2,  187. 

2  Pendleton,  311. 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  323 

of  peace  that  in  July,  1864,  he  incurred  the  wrath  of  the 
Richmond  newspapers  by  an  undignified  and  undiplomatic 
grasping  at  the  possibility  of  opening  negotiations.  He  re- 
ceived two  obscure  Northerners  who  came  to  Richmond 
and  let  them  know  of  his  entire  willingness  to  treat  with 
Washington.  "Here  come  two  ignorant,  impudent  Yankee 
characters,"  said  the  Examiner y  "picked  up  at  the  first  street 
corner,  without  credentials  or  character,  who  got  in  one 
day  a  complete  anterior  view  of  the  dispositions  and  opinions 
of  the  Confederate  government."  1  This  move  was  so  unlike 
Davis  that  it  may  have  been  advised  by  Benjamin,  who 
understood  the  urgent  need  of  doing  something  and  would 
have  liked  to  get  in  touch  with  the  Northern  government. 

Peace  talk  continued,  and  peace  discussions  occupied  the 
time  of  Congress.  Foote  demanded  the  opening  of  negotia- 
tions on  the  plain  basis  of  surrender.  Early  in  1865, 
Stephens  in  the  Senate  moved  for  the  appointment  of  com- 
missioners to  confer  with  the  Union  government.  About 
this  time,  the  prominent  Francis  P.  Blair  was  permitted  to 
come  to  Richmond  on  a  confidential  mission  to  suggest  a 
way  of  ending  the  war  by  the  joint  action  of  the  opposing 
armies  in  Mexico.  The  proposal  was  a  mere  pretext,  a 
scheme  for  laying  bare  the  depression  of  the  Southern 
leaders.  The  peace  party,  however,  hailed  Blair's  coming 
with  delight.  Davis  was  not  deceived,  but  he  was  persuaded 
by  Benjamin  to  open  negotiations.  The  President  probably 
wished  to  hoist  Stephens  with  his  own  petard.  Stephens  had 
proclaimed  that  peace  was  to  be  had  for  the  asking:  Davis 
now  sent  him  to  procure  it. 

The  President  himself  would  not  be  a  party  to  the  farce, 
declining  to  meet  Lincoln,  as  Blair  suggested.    He  appointed 

1  January   6,   1865. 


324  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Stephens,  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  and  former  Supreme  Court  jus- 
tice James  A.  Campbell  to  represent  him.  Stephens  actually 
seems  to  have  set  off  with  hope,  a  fact  that  illustrates  his 
fundamental  absurdity  better  than  words.  The  futility  of 
negotiations  at  once  appeared  when  put  to  the  test.  Lincoln 
and  Seward  met  the  three  Confederate  commissioners  at 
Hampton  Roads  and  offered  no  concessions  whatever.  They 
had  but  played,  through  Blair,  with  the  Southern  leaders, 
who  frankly  revealed  their  utter  hopelessness.  The  Presi- 
dent and  Secretary  of  State  went  back  to  Washington  with 
the  comfortable  assurance  that  the  war  was  over.  If  the 
Confederacy  had  had  any  further  vitality,  the  Hampton 
Roads  Conference  would  have  been  damaging;  but,  as  it  was, 
the  expiring  patient  was  beyond  injury. 

The  incident  closed  the  malapropos  career  of  Stephens 
as  a  Confederate — a  career  in  which  he  had  done  nothing 
for  the  cause  and  much  against  it,  not  from  want  of  pa- 
triotism but  from  lack  of  common  sense.  Stephens  was  a 
very  high  man,  above  personal  considerations.  Indeed,  alone 
in  American  history,  he  recalls  the  character  of  Cato.  But 
an  idealism  incurable  by  fact,  grief  over  the  separation  of 
the  South  from  the  Union  and  the  horrors  of  war  distracted 
his  impressionable  mind  and  made  him  a  liability  to  his 
country  and  one  of  the  causes  of  its  overthrow.  He  is  an 
excellent  illustration  of  the  evil  a  good  man  may  do  when 
he  becomes  divorced  from  sanity. 

The  fiasco  of  the  peace  mission  strengthened  Davis  for  a 
moment,  though  only  for  a  moment.  A  mass  meeting  of 
citizens  in  the  African  church  in  Richmond  in  March,  1865, 
listened  to  the  greatest  speech  of  his  life  as  he  strove  to 
arouse  the  people  to  a  new  determination  to  conquer.  He 
spoke  with  such  power  that  the  audience  was  carried  away 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  325 

and  cheered  wildly.  Eleventh  hour  speeches,  however,  could 
not  change  the  course  of  events.  At  another  meeting, 
Benjamin  boldly  announced  the  government's  intention  to 
make  negro  soldiers  a  large  factor  in  the  war.  Yes,  with 
his  back  to  the  wall,  Jefferson  Davis  had  come  to  this! 
More,  on  Benjamin's  persuasion,  France  was  secretly  in- 
formed that  the  Confederacy  was  willing  to  abandon  slavery. 
Indeed,  Davis  was  prepared  to  adopt  any  course,  make  any 
sacrifice  that  would  avert  the  doom  of  the  falling  state.  All 
too  late! 

The  government  had  been  inevitably  driven  to  tap  the  one 
source  of  man  power  left.  Cleburne's  plan,  completely 
squelched  at  the  beginning  of  1864,  now  bore  fruit.1  The 
idea  spread  and  was  generally  approved.  Jefferson  Davis, 
however,  in  his  conservatism  would  probably  have  hesitated 
still  longer  but  for  the  advice  of  Benjamin  and  the  urgings 
of  Lee,  who  wanted  negro  soldiers.  In  his  message  to  Con- 
gress of  November,  1864,  the  President  actually,  though 
not  openly,  asked  for  the  enlistment  of  blacks.  On  account 
of  the  desperate  condition  of  affairs,  Congress  did  not  op- 
pose the  request,  as  it  would  otherwise  doubtless  have  done. 
It  dallied  instead.  The  two  sets  of  weary  lawyers  that 
made  up  Congress  fiddled  while  Rome  burned,  after  the  im- 
memorial custom  of  lawyers.  They  ineptly  debated  and 
amended  while  the  nation  swiftly  perished.  Whatever  merit 
Davis's  proposal  might  have  had  in  the  first  place  was  dis- 
sipated by  the  feeble  and  dilatory  conduct  of  Congress, 
which  finally,  in  the  last  weeks  of  the  Confederacy,  actually 
got  a  slave-soldier  bill  passed.  This  slowness  was  due  in 
part  to  the  public  distrust  of  the  idea  and  partly  to  the 
President's   unpopularity.     If   the  measure   had   been   in- 

*J.  A.  Buck,  Cleburne  and  his  Command,  212. 


326  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

troduced  by  Davis's  opponents,  it  would  have  fared 
better. 

There  was  a  pet  Southern  theory,  slowly  yielding  to  hard 
fact,  that  negroes  would  not  make  soldiers,  and  Congress 
continually  dwelt  on  it.  Why  enlist  men,  it  was  argued, 
who  would  be  of  no  service?  Besides,  the  little  politicians 
were  not  prepared  to  emancipate  slaves  in  order  to  provide 
soldiers,  though  Davis,  Benjamin  and  Lee  were  completely 
reconciled  to  it. 

Chambers  of  Mississippi  said  in  Congress:  "The  negroes 
will  not  fight.    All  history  shows  that." 

Simson  of  South  Carolina  (sotto  voce):  "The  Yankees 
make  them  fight." 

Lester  of  Georgia:  "Not  much." 

Marshall,  of  course  of  Kentucky:  "Fill  them  with  whiskey 
and  they  will  fight."  * 

The  interminable  deliberations  of  Congress  were  hurried 
by  Lee.  He,  practical  man,  wanted  soldiers — black,  if  white 
were  no  longer  available.  In  January,  1865,  he  urged  the 
state  of  Virginia  to  enroll  negroes,  admitting  that  slavery 
must  be  given  up.  Congress  dallied  a  month  longer,  when, 
at  last,  a  bill  for  enlisting  200,000  blacks  was  introduced  in 
the  Senate.  It  was  voted  down  by  a  large  majority:  R.  M. 
T.  Hunter  was  pronounced  in  his  opposition.2 

Lee,  desperate  for  men,  reiterated  his  request.  Barksdale, 
the  administration  leader,  thereupon  offered  in  the  House  a 
bill  for  raising  300,000  negro  troops  which  threw  on  the 
states  the  duty  of  supplying  them  and  the  onus  of  deciding 
whether  they  were  to  be  free  or  not.  Virginia  had  already 
decided  to  enlist  negroes,  and  Congress  followed  its  example. 

1  Eocmniner,  November    n,    1864. 

2 American  Historical   Review,  18,  298. 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  327 

Barksdale's  bill  became  law  on  March  9,  precisely  a  month 
before  Lee's  surrender.  At  that  late  date  it  was,  of  course, 
quite  useless. 

The  effort  to  reen force  the  army  with  blacks  failed  partly 
because  it  became  involved  with  the  congressional  revolt 
against  Davis.  Congress  was  outraged  because  Hood  re- 
mained in  command  of  the  Western  army.  A  less  thin- 
skinned  man  than  Jefferson  Davis  would  have  removed 
Hood  after  the  fall  of  Atlanta  and  replaced  Johnston  in  com- 
mand. But  writhing  under  the  public  condemnation  and 
maddened  by  the  horrible  results  of  his  meddling,  the  Presi- 
dent stubbornly  clung  to  Hood  with  a  king-can-do-no-wrong 
gesture.  It  was  not  loyalty  to  an  incapable ;  it  was  not  mere 
obstinacy  aroused  to  fury  by  opposition;  but  it  was  the  set 
purpose  of  pain,  the  resolution  of  the  victim  on  the  rack 
who  sets  his  teeth  and  refuses  to  give  way. 

Davis  was,  indeed,  stretched  on  the  rack  of  a  tough 
world.  His  credit  was  long  since  gone;  he  was  assailed, 
denounced,  or  ignored.  Gladstone  made  no  more  speeches 
hailing  him  the  founder  of  a  nation;  his  name  was  no  longer 
coupled  with  Washington's.  Nothing  fails  like  failure. 
Malice  domestic  was  added  to  the  foreign  levy  of  the  enemy 
by  the  constant  attacks  made  on  him  in  Congress.  Foote  in 
the  House  and  Wigfall  in  the  Senate  were  his  ever-active 
enemies.  An  action  of  the  Virginia  legislature  quickened 
the  congressional  insurgency  against  the  President.  In  Janu- 
ary, 1865,  the  legislature  ventured  to  ask  Davis  to  appoint 
a  commander  in  chief  of  the  armies.  This  was  a  direct 
attack  on  the  executive  as  military  director.  Davis  met  it 
with  admirable  self-control,  replying  that  Lee  had  once  been 
commander  in  chief  (i.e.,  military  adviser)  and  that  he  would 
be  glad  to  appoint  Lee  to  the  position  once  more  when  prac- 


328  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

ticable.  The  legislature,  which  aimed  to  have  the  military 
control  taken  from  Davis's  hands,  not  to  have  Lee  made  a 
sort  of  chief  of  staff,  was  nonplused. 

Congress,  however,  now  took  up  the  gage.  It  passed  a 
bill  creating  the  office  of  commander  in  chief  and  called  for 
the  reinstatement  of  Johnston  to  the  Western  command. 
The  Johnston  resolution  passed  the  Senate  by  a  vote  of 
20  to  2 ;  and  the  fact  that  the  only  two  men  voting  against  it 
were  the  dyed-in-the-wool  administration  supporters,  Barn- 
well and  Hill,  shows  how  little  strength  the  President  had  in 
Congress.  The  measure  was  nothing  less  than  an  effort  to 
supersede  him  for  all  practical  purposes,  for  military  affairs 
were  all  that  he  had  to  handle  now.  Diplomacy,  finance, 
everything  else  had  gone  by  the  board. 

Davis  parried  the  blow  with  great  dexterity.  He  ap- 
pointed Lee  commander  in  chief  and  allowed  him,  in  that 
capacity,  to  appoint  Johnston  to  the  Western  army.  Thus 
the  President  was  spared  the  mortification  of  proclaiming  his 
mistake  to  the  world  and  reelevating  the  man  he  hated. 
Moreover,  he  was  still  in  control  of  the  armies.  Lee  con- 
tinued to  act  under  him.  The  nation  saw  that  the  President 
had  not  been  displaced.  The  revolution,  from  which  for  a 
moment  much  was  expected,  thus  came  to  nothing.  Lee 
refused  to  play  his  part  in  the  comedy. 

With  the  failure  of  Congress  to  overthrow  Davis,  the  last 
hope  of  the  Confederacy  swiftly  faded.  The  people  would 
no  longer  support  the  government;  the  armies  were  wasting 
away  and  there  were  no  recruits.  A  parliamentary  system 
would  have  brought  in  a  new  government;  but  the  rigid 
American  system,  which,  in  this  case,  imposed  on  the  country 
a  six-year  executive,  offered  no  relief.    The  ship  of  state  was 


WANTED  A  CROMWELL  329 

sinking,  but  Jefferson  Davis  would  walk  the  deck  as  captain 
until  it  took  the  final  plunge. 

Lee  did  not  respond  to  the  will  of  the  people  when  Con- 
gress made  him  commander  in  chief.  He  insisted  on  re- 
maining a  subordinate,  replying  to  Davis's  message  of  ap- 
pointment as  follows:  "I  received  your  telegram  announcing 
my  confirmation  by  the  Senate  as  general-in-chief  of  the 
Confederate  States.  I  am  indebted  alone  to  the  kindness  of 
his  Excellency  the  President  for  my  nomination  to  this  high 
and  arduous  office,  and  I  wish  I  had  the  ability  to  fill  it  to 
advantage.  As  I  have  received  no  instructions  as  to  my 
duties,  I  do  not  know  what  he  desires  me  to  undertake. "  * 
These  are  not  the  words  of  a  Caesarian  state-saver. 

It  is  possible  that  Lee  made  no  effort  to  exercise  his  new 
powers  because  he  felt  it  would  be  useless,  though  there  are 
indications  that  he  had  a  ray  of  hope  as  late  as  the  opening 
weeks  of  1865.  He  thought  of  abandoning  Richmond  and 
retreating  southward  to  join  forces  with  Johnston  for  an 
attack  on  Sherman.  But  the  roads  were  very  bad  and  Davis 
did  not  approve,  and  the  plan  was  abandoned.  It  would 
have  led  to  nothing,  for  Sherman  was  too  strong  to  have 
been  beaten  by  the  combined  wrecks  of  the  two  armies. 

A  result  of  the  little  revolution  that  saw  Lee  made  gen- 
eralissimo was  the  passing  of  Seddon.  The  valetudinarian 
had  made  an  able  war  minister,  but  he  had  incurred  great 
unpopularity  in  consenting  to  Johnston's  removal  and  the 
Johnston  party  hated  him.  He  fell  as  a  result  of  a  direct 
demand  of  Congress  for  the  dismissal  of  all  the  cabinet 
members  except  Trenholm,  Memminger's  successor.  Seddon 
resigned;  the  rest  of  the  cabinet  remained.2 

*J.  W.  Jones,  Life  and  Letters  of  Lee,  351. 
3  Schwab,  210. 


330  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

The  controversy  between  President  and  Congress  con- 
tinued through  the  remainder  of  the  session.  Bills  were 
passed  and  freely  vetoed.  Haynes  of  Tennessee  and  Wig  fall 
on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  charged  Davis  with  being  the  cause 
of  the  national  misfortunes:  they  called  him  "mediocre  and 
malicious."  The  President  responded  by  denouncing  the 
action  of  Congress  which  had  driven  Seddon  to  resign  as 
unconstitutional.  Unconstitutional!  Surely  he  had  little 
sense  of  humor  or  he  would  not  have  echoed  this  cry  which 
Stephens  had  worn  out  against  himself!  This  talk  of  the 
constitution  with  the  government  literally  tumbling  down 
about  his  ears  makes  Davis  seem  almost  as  doctrinaire  as  the 
Vice  President. 

The  cause  was,  indeed,  at  the  last  gasp.  The  Richmond 
of  this  period  was  interesting  as  the  capital  of  a  nation  in 
process  of  dissolution.  It  was  a  City  of  Darkest  Night.  The 
crowded  populace  of  maimed  soldiers,  refugees  and  hungry 
clerks  passed  wanly  through  the  streets,  seeking  distraction 
from  the  misery  of  the  situation.  Food  was  scarce  and  sold 
for  enormous  sums  of  joke  currency — $1,000  for  a  barrel 
of  flour.  Men  wore  faded  clothes  from  the  attic  and  women 
clad  themselves  in  any  makeshift  that  came  handy.  Yet 
with  true  Southern  light-heartedness  merriment  continued, 
and  girls  in  dresses  made  out  of  window  curtains  danced  with 
lean  and  ragged  officers  and  were  happy  in  spite  of  every- 
thing. The  men  could  not  kill  care  so  easily.  They  loafed 
in  the  numerous  saloons  and  played  in  the  gaudy  faro 
palaces,  where  light  and  comfort  and  food  were  to  be  had  in 
exchange  for  money  so  nearly  worthless  as  to  make  the 
hospitality  of  the  gambling  hells  seem  a  kind  of  charity. 
Such  was  the  Confederacy  in  the  last  months  of  its  existence. 


XIV 

CATASTROPHE 

JEFFERSON  DAVIS  had  shown  that  he  was  not  a 
genius,  but  he  was  proving  that  he  was  a  very  brave 
man.  Indeed,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  he  owed  his  preeminence 
to  certain  moral  excellencies  which  often  counterbalance  a 
lack  of  great  intellectual  power.  His  was  a  high-strung, 
nervous  courage  that  could  not  be  daunted.  He  had  a 
resolution  that  quailed  at  nothing;  a  self-confidence  that 
seldom  faltered;  a  dignity  that  rang  true  in  spite  of  hatred 
and  ridicule  and  disaster.  Nature  had  played  a  trick  on  him, 
mingling  with  the  scholar's  fatal  temperament  the  moral 
equipment  of  a  hero.  There  was  something  very  fine  in  his 
calm  courage  in  that  February  and  March  of  1865  as  he 
went  out  on  his  long  daily  rides  with  only  an  aide  or  two, 
seemingly  as  serene  and  confident  as  in  the  springtime  of 
success,  though  his  world  was  crumbling  about  him  and  he 
knew  that  he  was  ringed  around  with  hate.  Once  an  assassin 
had  fired  at  him,  but  he  scorned  precautions — perhaps  would 
have  been  relieved  if  death  had  found  him.  If  perishing 
were  the  order  of  the  day,  he  would  perish  like  a  gentleman, 
quietly  and  with  a  certain  proud  detachment. 

It  had  come  to  this  that  the  Confederacy  was  now  a 
shattered  hull  about  to  dissolve  into  nothingness:  the  Nordic 
empire  in  the  tropics  was  only  a  fading  dreamland.  The 
great  experiment  was  at  an  end.    Those  final  weeks  of  hope- 

331 


332  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

less  waiting  were  terrible  to  Jefferson  Davis,  for  he  had 
nothing  to  do  but  deliberate  on  the  past.  Opportunities  lost 
forever  haunted  him;  the  worm  within  tormented  him  while 
the  external  world  frowned  on  him.  It  was  a  far  cry  from 
1861,  when  men  called  him  a  genius,  to  1865,  when  they 
sneered  at  him  as  "mediocre."  This  was  the  hardest  thing  to 
bear,  this  disesteem  that  was  scarcely  even  ridicule.  Death 
would  have  meant  little  to  him,  for  he  had  no  physical  fear, 
but  it  tortured  him  to  stand  before  the  world  as  an  intel- 
lectual failure — as  a  man  who  could  not  succeed  in  a  mighty 
enterprise.  In  this  last  period  he  spent  his  time  fumbling 
over  papers,  busy  about  nothing,  seeking  to  kill  thought. 

The  final  act  of  the  tragedy  was  at  hand.  Seddon  had 
been  succeeded  by  John  C.  Breckinridge,  who  worked  with 
great  energy  and  success  to  collect  provisions.  Contrary  to 
popular  conceptions,  the  South  was  far  from  having  ex- 
hausted the  food  supply,  and  the  stations  on  the  railroad 
from  North  Carolina  to  Virginia  were  piled  with  tons  of  pro- 
visions. Actually,  the  Confederate  army  had  more  food  in 
its  depots  at  the  last  than  at  almost  any  other  period  of  the 
war.  The  troops  starved  in  the  trenches  at  Petersburg  and 
on  the  way  to  Appomattox,  but  mainly  because  of  lack  of 
transportation,  certainly  not  from  lack  of  supplies. 

In  February  and  March,  1865,  Lee's  army  gradually  broke 
up.  The  men  deserted  by  hundreds  and  there  were  no  new- 
comers to  take  their  places.  A  few  thousand  heroic  souls  re- 
mained with  the  colors  and  contemplated  cheerfully  the  be- 
ginning of  a  new  campaign  against  an  overwhelming  enemy. 
But  for  Lee's  vast  popularity  the  end  would  have  come 
sooner  than  it  did.  Lee  himself  could  not  change  the  logic 
of  the  hopeless  situation  or  give  popularity  and  strength  to 
a  crumbling  government. 


CATASTROPHE  333 

Springtime,  time  of  resurrection,  saw  the  death  of  the 
Confederacy.  On  the  first  of  April,  Grant  broke  Lee's 
attenuated  lines  at  Five  Forks,  and  the  long  defense  of  Rich- 
mond ended.  Lee  retreated  westward  after  notifying  Davis 
that  the  city  must  fall. 

The  President  was  in  church  on  the  morning  of  Sunday, 
April  2,  when  the  messenger  came  with  Lee's  telegram.  Ashy 
pale  but  composed,  the  fallen  ruler  left  the  church  in  order 
to  prepare  for  flight.  Anticipating  the  calamity,  he  had 
shipped  off  his  family  some  days  before.  Late  that  afternoon 
a  train  bumped  its  way  southward  over  the  decaying  road- 
bed, carrying  the  Confederate  government  and  archives. 
The  warehouses,  full  of  clothing  never  issued  to  the  naked 
troops,  were  set  on  fire,  and  in  the  confusion  a  great  part  of 
the  town  burned. 

On  April  9,  Lee  surrendered  to  Grant  at  Appomattox. 
Lee  went  to  meet  Grant  clothed  in  his  best  uniform  and 
wearing  his  dress  sword — tall,  handsome,  immaculate.  Grant 
was  small,  shy,  rusty,  unimpressive. 

Grant  must  have  thought  of  their  very  different  lives  as 
he  talked  with  his  great  opponent.  He  had  had  no  place 
in  the  sun  like  Lee:  life  had  given  him  little  and  had  almost 
taken  that  away.  He  had  been  a  man  of  imagination  in  an 
alien  environment;  he  had  sought  to  break  the  monotony 
with  drink;  he  had  left  the  army  for  civilian  life,  for  which 
a  nature  guilelessly  honest  and  singularly  unpretending  un- 
fitted him.  He  had  brooded  and  dreamed,  little  thinking 
that  the  dreams  would  come  true.  Then  the  war  had  given 
him  his  chance,  and  the  proclaimed  failure — as  if  in  mockery 
on  men's  judgments — had  overthrown  the  Confederacy  and 
saved  the  Union.  The  great  Illinoisian  has  been  much  writ- 
ten about  but  little  understood.    He  was  in  reality  an  in- 


334  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

articulate  imaginer,  a  poet  who  wrote  epics  in  blood.  Action 
was  his  sphere,  not  words;  and  in  mighty  action  he  has  been 
surpassed  by  no  one  in  our  history. 

The  four  great  steps  in  his  career  were  the  four  acts  of 
the  South 's  downfall.  At  Fort  Donelson  he  gained  the  first 
great  victory  for  the  Union.  At  Vicksburg  he  won  the  whole 
Mississippi  Valley  and  divided  the  Confederacy.  At  Mis- 
sionary Ridge  he  decided  the  war  in  the  West  and  paved 
the  way  for  Sherman's  march.  At  Appomattox  he  brought 
the  war  itself  to  an  end.  All  of  his  enterprises  were  attended 
with  that  completeness  of  success  which  is  the  mark  of  great- 
ness. While  Grant  was  not  the  master  of  the  art  of  com- 
manding a  single  army  that  Lee  was,  since  with  an  enormous 
superiority  of  force  he  held  his  own  against  Lee  only  with 
great  difficulty,  yet  in  that  field  in  which  wars  are  won 
and  lost — that  of  grand  strategy — no  American  general  ap- 
proaches him.  He  had  the  vast  imagination  that  surveys 
a  whole  country  and  combines  the  movements  of  many 
armies  for  some  great  common  object,  together  with  the 
practical  judgment  that  crowns  imagination  with  success. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  he  won  the  war  for  the 
Union.  We  cannot  imagine  McClellan  or  Rosecrans  or 
even  Sherman  as  ever  breaking  down  the  powerful  re- 
sistance of  the  South.  The  task  demanded  the  keen  insight 
and  the  immense  will  of  Grant.  But  for  him  the  Confederacy 
would  probably  have  succeeded  in  spite  of  every  handicap. 

Even  yet,  after  Lee's  surrender,  Jefferson  Davis  did  not 
absolutely  despair.  He  was  not  the  kind  of  man  that  yields 
to  circumstances  while  the  remotest  possibility  of  resistance 
remains.  He  would  have  gone  on  with  the  war  if  he  had 
found  men  willing  to  follow  him.  He  dreamed  of  reaching 
Texas,  still  unconquered,  and  holding  out  in  that  distant 


CATASTROPHE  335 

region.  But  the  dream  faded  before  the  unmistakable  reality 
that  the  war  was  over  since  the  people  had  accepted  Lee's 
surrender  as  conclusive.  Presently  Johnston,  in  North 
Carolina,  surrendered  the  shadow  of  the  Western  army. 

Davis,  now  abandoning  the  thought  of  further  resistance, 
wandered  into  Georgia  in  the  hope  of  escape  abroad.  At  one 
wayside  cabin  where  he  received  hospitality  he  gave  his  last 
money,  a  gold  piece,  to  a  child  named  after  him  just  as  he 
had  been  named  after  Jefferson.  He  had  nothing  left:  he 
was  ruined.  Brierfield  had  been  devastated  long  before  by 
Union  patriots.  Yet  penniless,  a  fugitive  with  a  price  on 
him,  the  epic  failure  of  the  age,  he  lost  none  of  his  courage 
or  dignity.  The  worst  blows  of  fortune  could  not  break  his 
spirit  or  diminish  his  manhood.  In  spite  of  all  his  faults, 
he  was  a  great  man. 

At  length  he  was  captured  by  a  force  of  cavalry  and 
brought  to  Fort  Monroe  by  water.  On  the  same  steamer 
with  him  was  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  who  had  tried  him 
as  sorely  as  one  man  may  try  another.  He  held  no  parley 
with  the  ex- Vice  President  but  met  him  with  a  quiet  courtesy 
worthy  of  a  king  fallen  on  evil  days. 

Davis  was  imprisoned  at  Fort  Monroe  with  some  circum- 
stances of  severity.  He  was  kept  in  a  damp  casemate  and 
actually  manacled.  This  martyrdom  worked  to  his  benefit. 
The  irons  he  wore  for  the  South  restored  his  popularity  or, 
rather,  gave  him  a  popularity  he  had  never  had  before.  Men 
forgot  his  failure  in  sympathy  for  his  in  some  part  vicarious 
sufferings.  Furthermore,  the  United  States  government 
eased  the  feelings  of  the  mob  that  was  clamoring  for  blood 
with  the  picture  of  the  fallen  President  in  chains.  At  the 
first  moment  practicable  he  was  released.  The  government 
made  a  show  of  bringing  him  to  trial,  but  it  was  only  a 


336  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

gesture,  and  the  proceedings  against  him  were  finally  dis- 
missed, to  the  general  relief.  It  was  well.  There  would 
have  been  a  blot  on  our  history  if  the  Southern  chieftain  had 
been  tried  for  being  faithful  to  the  South.  The  government 
acted  moderately  in  its  treatment  of  Jefferson  Davis.  It 
could  not  have  well  done  less  than  it  did,  considering  the 
terrible  passions  that  had  been  aroused  by  the  war;  it  was 
supremely  wise  in  that  it  did  not  do  more. 


XV 

WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED 

THE  fall  of  the  Confederacy  has  been  attributed  to 
many  causes,  all  of  them  having  some  measure  of 
truth.  But  nearly  all  of  these  are  contributing  and  not  de- 
termining causes;  and  when  a  great  political  movement  fails 
it  usually  does  so  for  some  one  outstanding  reason.  A 
difference  in  one  important  factor  often  spells  the  differ- 
ence between  victory  and  defeat. 

The  failure  of  the  South  has  been  frequently  set  down  to 
the  blockade.  This  is  negatively  true,  in  so  much  that  the 
South  would  have  won  if  there  had  been  no  blockade,  be- 
cause then  it  would  have  had  wealth  and,  with  wealth,  ample 
supplies  and  recruits.  The  Confederacy  could  never  have 
been  conquered  if  its  ports  had  remained  open  to  the  world. 
Still  as  the  South  might  have  won  in  spite  of  the  blockade — 
as  the  blockade  was,  to  a  certain  extent,  eluded — this  can- 
not be  considered  as  the  predominating  influence  that  turned 
the  war  one  way  instead  of  the  other. 

The  dearth  of  food  has  been  thought  by  some  to  be  the 
main  cause  of  the  breakdown.  The  Southern  armies  suffered 
from  a  shortage  of  provisions  almost  through  the  entire 
war.  At  times  they  were  practically  without  meat  rations 
and  reduced  to  corn  meal.  Yet  as  the  health  of  the  troops 
was  good  and  they  were  able  to  perform  great  feats  of  ex- 
ertion in  marching  and  fighting,  it  is  not  likely  that  food 

337 


338  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

shortage  was  a  decisive  factor  except  in  so  far  as  it  led 
Lee  to  make  the  invasion  of  Pennsylvania.  Food  did  not 
win  or  lose  the  war. 

Inferior  military  equipment  has  been  assigned  as  a  prin- 
cipal cause  of  failure.  If  the  Confederacy  had  ended  in 
1862,  this  diagnosis  would  have  been  right.  But  in  1863 
the  Southern  troops  were  relatively  well  armed  and  in  1864 
much  more  so.  In  arms  and  ammunition,  they  were  not, 
after  the  first  period,  much  inferior  to  the  Unionists  and 
were  actually  sometimes  superior.  So  this  explanation  can 
be  set  aside. 

The  failure  of  the  government  to  secure  its  currency 
and  lay  up  a  credit  abroad  by  exporting  cotton  early  in  the 
war  is  frequently  advanced  as  the  main  reason  for  defeat. 
There  is  more  truth  in  this  than  in  the  foregoing  allegations. 
The  Confederate  government  was  terribly  hampered  by 
lack  of  money  through  the  entire  war,  both  at  home  and 
abroad.  If  it  had  had  money,  it  might  have  bought  a  navy 
at  the  beginning  of  the  struggle,  obtained  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion in  any  quantity  and  procured  friends.  Yet  without 
money  the  Confederacy  managed  to  do  so  much  that  it  is 
not  likely  that  finance  was  the  determining  factor. 

Some  men  have  believed  that  the  lack  of  mechanical  equip- 
ment— of  railways  and  railway  repairs,  factories,  mines  and 
mills — led  to  the  downfall  of  the  South.  It  is  true  that  the 
agricultural  Confederacy  was  terribly  handicapped  by  its 
industrial  poverty,  especially  its  want  of  metal  works.  The 
railroads  deteriorated  year  after  year,  and  there  was  a  pain- 
ful scarcity  of  iron.  Yet  even  this  great  deficiency  was 
partly  overcome,  and  might  have  been  remedied  in  a  far 
larger  degree  if  the  government  had  been  more  enterprising. 
The  South  was  manufacturing  many  things  by  1863 — cloth- 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED  339 

ing,1  shoes,  munitions,  rifles,  cannon,  leather  goods — and 
iron  and  coal  mines  were  worked  on  a  considerable  scale. 
The  railroads,  while  always  on  the  point  of  breaking  down, 
never  broke  down,  and  under  better  governmental  direction 
might  have  done  much  more.  They  were  capable  of  trans- 
porting quantities  of  supplies  and  large  bodies  of  troops 
through  the  entire  war.  Thus,  while  the  mechanical  equip- 
ment of  the  South  was  deficient,  transportation  continued 
and  might  have  gone  on  for  some  time  longer. 

Fewness  of  soldiers  is  one  of  the  most  popular  reasons 
advanced  for  the  defeat  of  the  South.  The  Southern  armies 
were  nearly  always  outnumbered,  sometimes  decisively  so. 
They  contained  in  all  about  800,000  men ;  the  Union  armies 
three  times  as  many.  At  the  end  of  1864,  there  were  not 
many  more  than  100,000  men  in  all  the  Confederate  armies. 
If  the  South  had  had  larger  forces  in  1863  and  1864,  the 
outcome  of  events  would  probably  have  been  very  different. 
Insufficient  cannon  food  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  main 
reasons  for  the  collapse  of  the  Confederacy. 

Yet  it  was  not  absolutely  determining.  The  Southern 
troops  were  nearly  all  Americans;  many  of  the  Unionists 
were  foreigners.  And  if  the  South  was  so  heavily  outnum- 
bered, this  was  partly  the  fault  of  the  government,  which 
feared  to  utilize  negroes  for  military  purposes.  With  blacks, 
the  South  might  have  put  into  the  field  more  than  a  million 
men:  it  actually  had  about  800,000.  The  Union  found  such 
difficulty  in  breaking  down  the  resistance  of  the  Confederacy 
and  was  in  such  straits  for  recruits  in  1864  that  it  seems 
probable  that  the  Southern  forces,  if  properly  handled,  would 
have  been  sufficient  to  win  the  war.  It  takes  far  greater 
numbers  to  invade  than  to  defend,  and  the  North  was  called 

1The  Mississippi  Valley  Historical  Review,  8,  231-249. 


340  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

on  to  invade  a  country  subtropical  in  character,  abounding 
in  streams  and  swamps  and  offering  many  advantages  to 
the  defense.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  great  rivers,  which 
gave  easy  access  to  the  interior  at  many  points,  it  is  not 
likely  that  the  North  would  ever  have  conquered. 

The  Southern  forces  were  large  enough  to  support  the 
war  for  four  years.  Were  they  large  enough  to  have  won 
the  war?  Probably,  if  handled  as  a  unit.  Handled  piece- 
meal and  waste  fully,  they  were  insufficient,  and  that  is  why 
the  Confederacy  fell.  The  main  cause  of  the  disaster  was 
strategic,  though  there  were  a  number  of  powerful  contribut- 
ing causes. 

The  armies  were  not  directed  with  a  common  purpose: 
no  strategic  system  was  ever  devised  by  the  South.  The 
North  had  two  great  strategic  ideas — the  one  originated  by 
Halleck,  the  other  by  Grant.  Halleck  is  a  man  to  whom 
history  has  not  done  justice;  he  had  much  to  do  with  the 
Union  success.  The  North,  in  making  the  Mississippi  Valley 
the  main  front  of  the  struggle,  was  strategically  right.  Not 
by  winning  battles  but  by  taking  New  Orleans  and  Vicks- 
burg,  the  Union  won  the  war.  It  could  afford  to  lose  battles 
in  Virginia  while  conquering  the  West.  Then,  when  the 
main  conflict  had  been  won,  the  Union  armies,  East  and 
West,  concentrated  on  Lee  and  brought  the  struggle  to  a 
close.  The  South  was  frequently  better  in  the  strategy  of 
single  campaigns  than  the  North — thus  Lee  was  notably 
abler  than  the  generals  who  opposed  him — but  it  had  no 
grand  strategy,  and  wars  are  more  often  won  by  grand 
strategy  than  single  battles.  In  the  last  analysis,  the  Union 
triumphed  less  because  of  large  numbers,  more  food,  money 
and  equipment  and  its  navy  than  because  it  had  a  strategic 
system  it  was  able  to  carry  out. 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED         341 

The  South  had  two  strategic  opportunities.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war,  having  better  raw  troops  than  the  adversary, 
the  South  might  have  invaded  the  North  after  the  First 
Manassas  with  excellent  prospects  of  success.  The  fall  of 
Washington  would  probably  have  been  followed  by  the 
secession  of  all  the  border  states.  In  that  case,  the  South 
would  have  triumphed.  Jefferson  Davis's  caution  and  his 
mingling  of  political  calculations  with  military  plans  lost 
this  opportunity.  He  would  not  take  the  risk  of  invad- 
ing the  North  when  it  seemed  likely  that  Europe  would 
intervene  in  favor  of  the  Confederacy.  He  thought  that 
the  cotton  shortage  would  make  military  aggression 
needless. 

This  opportunity  for  the  offensive  was  based  on  the 
North's  unreadiness  for  war  in  1861.  By  the  spring  of  1862, 
the  Union  had  adapted  its  industrial  system  to  war  and  was 
prepared  for  the  struggle.  Consequently,  the  strategic  op- 
portunity of  the  South  passed  from  the  offensive  to  the  de- 
fensive: its  hope  of  success  lay  in  wearing  out  the  North  in 
a  protracted  struggle.  If  the  armies  of  the  Union  were  de- 
feated in  their  efforts  to  penetrate  the  South,  the  time  must 
come  when  the  Northern  public  would  refuse  to  continue 
to  support  the  necessary  sacrifices  or  Europe  might  really 
intervene.  This  was  the  chance  of  the  South  after  the  be- 
ginning  of  1862,  and  it  was  a  good  chance. 

The  Confederate  defense  in  the  East  was  successfully 
maintained  by  Lee's  victories  in  the  summer  of  1862,  though 
the  moment  that  he  ventured  on  the  offensive  with  his  small 
army  he  was  foiled  at  Sharpsburg.  All  he  could  reasonably 
hope  to  do  was  to  hold  the  line  of  the  Rappahannock  River, 
a  terrible  obstacle  for  the  Union  army  to  pass.  Lee's  vic- 
tories had  the  result  of  making  the  outcome  of  the  war, 


342  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

which  in  February,  1862,  seemed  dark  for  the  South,  doubt- 
ful, with  the  chances  favoring  the  Confederacy. 

If  the  Confederates  had  been  able  to  do  as  well  in  the 
West,  the  war  would  have  been  won  by  1864  or  1865 — 1866 
at  the  latest.  But  from  the  first  things  went  badly  for  the 
Confederacy  in  the  Mississippi  Valley.  Fort  Donelson, 
Shiloh  and  New  Orleans  gave  the  North  an  ascendency  in 
the  West  that  was  never  lost.  By  the  midsummer  of  1862, 
the  South  had  lost  the  whole  Mississippi  River  with  the 
exception  of  the  segment  between  Vicksburg  and  Port  Hud- 
son. Then  came  the  battle  of  Murfreesboro,  and  by  the 
beginning  of  1863  the  Union  had  almost  won  the  war  on 
the  most  important  front. 

Yet  Lee's  brilliant  triumph  at  Chancellorsville  imperiled 
the  Union  anew,  because  it  gave  the  Confederacy  the  means 
to  bolster  the  defense  in  the  West  and,  by  striking  at  Grant, 
the  chance  to  win  a  decisive  victory.  However,  because  the 
South  had  no  strategic  system,  because  all  its  operations 
were  separate  and  unrelated,  Lee  saw  the  problem  only  in 
the  light  of  his  own  situation.  He  decided  on  the  offensive 
with  means  too  small  at  the  very  moment  that  the  Western 
defense  was  breaking  down,  and  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg 
followed.  Then  came  the  long  last  agony,  which  Davis  and 
Bragg,  perhaps  mercifully,  shortened  by  gambling  away  the 
army  of  Tennessee  in  attacking  Sherman.  Such  in  brief  is 
the  sad  story  of  the  Confederacy. 

Why  was  it  that  the  South  had  no  adequate  strategic 
system?  Mainly  because  there  was  no  unity  of  control  and 
no  central  military  body  corresponding  to  a  general  staff. 
This  disunity  of  control  was  due  to  the  fact  that  Jefferson 
Davis  directed  the  war  and  yet  did  not  direct  it  fully.  He 
left  large  powers  to  the  generals  and  yet  wished  to  hold  the 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED        343 

reins.  The  best  military  movement  of  the  government  was 
made  at  the  close  of  1862,  when  Joseph  E.  Johnston  was 
assigned  to  the  headship  of  the  main  Western  department 
with  large  powers.  Lee  exercised  somewhat  similar  control 
in  the  East.  Yet  this  system  failed,  partly  because  there  was 
no  cooperation  between  East  and  West.  If  any  one  man 
had  been  in  control  of  all  the  Confederate  forces  in  1863, 
the  Pennsylvania  campaign  would  never  have  occurred. 
Vicksburg  would  have  been  relieved.  A  fatal  strategic  mis- 
take would  have  been  avoided. 

In  this  matter  of  military  direction,  Jefferson  Davis  com- 
mitted his  greatest  error.  He  was  a  man  of  much  more 
military  talent  than  he  has  been  given  credit  for,  but  he  was 
not  a  great  staff  officer  and  in  no  position  to  become  one. 
The  successful  conduct  of  the  war  called  for  all  the  ability 
and  all  the  energy  of  some  one  directing  mind.  That  mind 
could  not,  by  any  chance,  be  Jefferson  Davis,  because  he  was 
President.  As  President,  he  had  engrossing  political  and 
administrative  concerns.  His  cares  and  distractions  were 
legion. 

Yet  Davis  thought  that  he  could  be  President  and  still 
direct  the  war,  and  because  he  made  this  mistake  he  failed. 
Since  the  constitution  gave  him  the  powers  of  commander  in 
chief,  he  thought  that  he  must  exercise  them.  Educated 
a  soldier,  he  felt  that  he  must  play  a  soldier's  part  in  the  war. 
He  was  not  prepared  to  delegate  the  control  of  the  armies 
to  another.  Yet  that  was  the  thing  needed.  A  heaven-sent 
man  appeared  in  Lee ;  Congress  would  gladly  have  made  him 
commander  in  chief.    Here  was  the  soldier  to  win  the  war. 

If  Lee  had  been  made  head  of  all  the  armies  in  the  autumn 
of  1862,  he  would  have  shaken  himself  out  of  the  semi- 
lethargy  that  claimed  him,  the  result  of  years  of  service  as 


344  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

a  routine  officer.  He  would  have  exerted  his  great  powers, 
never  fully  tested  until  1864,  at  a  much  earlier  period  of  the 
struggle  and  probably  with  very  important  results.  His 
eminent  strategic  gifts  would  have  bloomed  in  the  full  light 
of  responsibility.  He  would  have  seen  the  war  as  a  whole 
instead  of  in  part.  He  would  have  looked  out  for  the  West 
as  much  as  for  the  East.  Finally,  he  would  have  carried  out 
the  true  strategic  policy  of  the  South — the  maintenance  of 
the  defense  along  the  interior  lines  of  communication. 
Troops  would  have  been  shifted  East  or  West  along  the  rail- 
roads as  they  were  needed,  instead  of  having  superfluity  in 
one  place  and  scarcity  in  another.  Vicksburg  would  have 
been  saved,  and  the  campaign  of  1863  would  probably  have 
ended  in  Union  failure  instead  of  Union  success.  There 
would  have  been  a  vast  difference  between  Lee,  the  com- 
mander in  chief,  with  Jackson  at  the  head  of  one  of  the 
armies,  and  Lee,  the  commander  of  the  army  of  Virginia, 
brilliantly  successful  in  his  own  field  but  unable  to  help 
elsewhere.  The  prospects  of  the  Confederacy  would  have 
been  immeasurably  improved. 

What  would  Jefferson  Davis  have  done  if  he  had  dele- 
gated the  management  of  the  armies  to  another?  The  proper 
work  of  a  President,  which  is  not  military  detail.  Surely 
he  had  burdens  enough  without  saddling  himself  with  the 
conducting  of  military  movements!  The  revolutionary  and 
experimental  character  of  the  Confederate  government  threw 
unusual  responsibilities  on  its  head.  Old  governments  run 
partly  by  mere  momentum;  people  obey  them  from  habit. 
A  new  government  makes  special  demands  on  the  ruler's 
qualities  of  leadership.  A  revolutionary  ruler  must  inspire 
and  persuade  his  people.  But  Jefferson  Davis  had  a  feeling 
that  he  was  the  head  of  a  long-established  government 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED  345 

and  so  he  made  no  effort  until  late  in  the  war  to  win  the 
people. 

Jefferson  Davis  chose  military  administration  as  his  par- 
ticular province,  though  he  gave  much  attention  to  other 
matters,  too.  Foreign  affairs,  the  control  of  Congress,  de- 
partmental concerns  took  up  much  of  his  time  and  attention. 
The  result  was  that  important  duties  were  frequently  left 
to  subordinates,  often  not  with  happy  results.  Sometimes 
the  choice  of  subordinates  was  unfortunate,  though  Jefferson 
Davis  was,  ordinarily,  a  good  judge  of  men.  Out  of  many 
candidates,  Lee  was  selected  as  the  head  of  the  army  of 
Virginia,  the  best  possible  selection.  No  better  choice  could 
have  been  made  than  that  of  Benjamin  for  foreign  affairs — 
only  Benjamin  was  not  sent  abroad.  Seddon  was  probably 
the  best  Secretary  of  War  Davis  could  have  named  from  the 
limited  field  of  possibilities.  Johnston  was  a  soldier  of  great 
ability  if  of  small  enterprise.  True,  Bragg  and  Pemberton 
were  failures,  but,  contrary  to  the  general  impression,  Hood 
was  not  such  a  mistake  as  he  seems.  Davis  deliberately  took 
Hood  because  he  wanted  a  fight,  and  Hood  fought.  The 
error  lay  in  the  impression,  created  and  fostered  by  Bragg 
for  months,  that  the  army  of  Tennessee  was  strong  enough 
to  beat  Sherman.  It  was  not,  and  any  general  who  essayed 
Hood's  task,  under  the  conditions  imposed  on  him,  would 
have  failed  in  much  the  same  way.  As  an  envoy,  Slidell 
was  an  admirable  choice,  as  was  Raphael  Semmes  as  a 
commerce  destroyer. 

The  most  criticized  of  Davis's  appointments,  not  even 
excepting  Pemberton  and  Hood,  was  Colonel  L.  B.  Northrop, 
Commissary-General  or  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Sub- 
sistence. It  must  be  admitted  that  Northrop  was  anything 
but  a  success,  but  the  difficulties  under  which  he  labored 


346  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

were  very  great.  It  was  a  position  that  would  have  taxed 
the  peculiar  talents  of  Herbert  Hoover.  Northrop  was  an 
old  army  officer,  a  rather  crusty  routine  executive.  He  be- 
came intensely  unpopular  because  his  agents,  under  the  law 
and  the  necessity  of  the  hour,  seized  food  on  purely  nominal 
payments.  Better  men  might  have  been  found  for  the  place, 
and  worse.  Northrop  had  some  energy  and  collected  large 
quantities  of  supplies  according  to  a  fairly  good  system. 

Early  in  the  war,  however,  the  Bureau  of  Subsistence  was 
embarrassed  by  coming  into  conflict  with  the  chief  commis- 
saries of  the  various  armies.  Bureau  agents  and  army  com- 
missaries bid  against  each  other  to  obtain  foodstuffs.  Such 
rivalry  created  bad  feeling  and  made  cooperation  of  the 
agencies  employed  in  obtaining  provisions  impossible. 

This  unfortunate  situation  was  partly  remedied  by  an  en- 
tire change  in  commissary  methods.  The  country  was  di- 
vided into  eleven  districts,  including  Kentucky,  usually  fol- 
lowing state  lines.  A  head  commissary  was  appointed  for 
each  district,  with  full  power  over  his  subordinates.  The 
army  commissaries  were  forbidden  to  compete  with  the 
state  commissaries,  which  had  right  of  way.  The  result  of 
this  more  efficient  regulation  was  that  supplies  were  more 
easily  collected  in  the  latter  part  of  the  war  than  at 
first. 

But  for  the  failure  of  the  railways,  food  would  have  been 
more  abundant  in  1864  than  in  1862.  Farmers  in  the  lower 
South  were  planting  grain  on  a  larger  scale  at  the  close  of 
the  war.  The  lower  South,  in  1861  as  in  191 7,  raised  cotton 
and  almost  nothing  else.  The  Confederate  armies  in  1861 
and  1862  relied  for  food  on  Virginia,  Kentucky  and  Ten- 
nessee. But  as  the  war  continued  and  the  blockade  made 
cotton-raising  useless,  less  cotton  was  raised  and  more  corn 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED         347 

and  meat.  In  1863,  Mississippi  had  a  surplus  of  food,  and 
indeed  the  South  generally,  for  the  crops  that  year  were 
good.  In  1864,  Sherman  found  such  abundance  in  Georgia 
that  his  men  lived  on  the  country  and  destroyed  enormous 
quantities  of  farm  products  besides.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  campaign  of  1865,  the  magazines  held  more  food  prob- 
ably than  at  any  previous  period  of  the  war.  All  through  the 
struggle,  large  quantities  of  provisions  were  captured  by  the 
enemy  or  destroyed  to  prevent  capture. 

It  was  recognized  at  the  opening  of  1863  that  the  food 
problem  was  really  one  of  transportation.  Much  food  was 
being  gathered  in  the  depots,  but  these  were  scattered  over 
the  country  at  long  distances  apart.  The  railways  had  diffi- 
culty in  bringing  provisions  hundreds  of  miles  to  the  armies. 
There  was  never  enough  food  (and  enough  transportation  to 
carry  sufficient  supplies  to  the  armies)  to  last  any  length  of 
time;  and,  besides,  the  armies  were  often  on  the  move.  The 
Union  forces  usually  relied  on  water  transportation  to  a  large 
extent  and  thus  had  a  great  advantage  over  the  Confederates, 
who  were  frequently  forced  to  carry  foodstuffs  for  long 
distances  by  wagon.  Thus  the  base  of  supplies  for  the  Union 
armies  operating  in  Virginia  was  the  Potomac,  York  or 
Rappahannock  River,  as  the  case  might  be,  while  Lee's  base, 
when  he  invaded  Pennsylvania,  was  Staunton,  in  the  Valley 
of  Virginia,  which  meant  that  his  line  of  communications 
was  long  and  open  to  attack.  The  limitation  to  inland  bases 
and  wagon  transportation  in  many  instances  kept  the  South- 
ern forces  insufficiently  provisioned. 

Yet  that  in  a  country  so  large  and  fertile  as  the  South, 
with  such  a  population  of  laborers,  the  armies  starved  all 
through  the  war  demands  some  further  explanation.  The 
truth  is  that  the  government's  lack  of  money  was  one  reason 


348  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

of  the  food  shortage.  Foodstuffs  were  impressed,  either  by 
means  of  the  tax  on  farm  products  or  by  simple  seizure  on 
payment  in  paper  money.  As  the  prices  in  paper  money 
were  so  small  as  to  be  negligible,  it  came  to  this  that  the 
Southern  people  practically  supported  the  armies  without 
recompense.  The  people  were  exceedingly  patriotic,  but  it 
is  not  in  human  nature  to  exert  one's  self  strenuously  for  no 
return.  Thus  many  plantations  lay  fallow  and  numbers  of 
slaves  idled. 

Jefferson  Davis  paid  very  little  attention  to  the  question 
of  food.  He  left  it  at  the  beginning  almost  entirely  to  Nor- 
throp. Seddon,  when  he  became  Secretary  of  War,  gave 
much  thought  to  the  commissary  and  to  the  related  transpor- 
tation problem.  In  March,  1863,  and  again  later  in  the  year, 
he  summoned  the  railroad  presidents  of  the  country  to  Rich- 
mond to  confer  with  him.  It  was  his  idea  to  put  all  the 
railways  under  the  control  of  a  single  official,  who  would 
have  corresponded  to  William  McAdoo  in  191 7.  A  mili- 
tary officer  did  exercise  a  sort  of  supervision  of  the  railroads, 
but  he  lacked  the  power  to  do  much:  Seddon  aimed  at  effi- 
cient control.  The  plan  was  eminently  wise,  and  if  it  had 
been  carried  out  the  food  supply  of  the  army  must  have 
been  greatly  enlarged.  Davis,  however,  refused  to  support 
the  Secretary  of  War  in  the  measure,  which  accordingly  came 
to  nothing. 

The  result  was  that  transportation  remained  in  a  state  of 
confusion  until  the  end  of  the  war.  Ordinarily,  the  railways 
were  run  as  nearly  as  possible  in  normal  peace  fashion,  with 
little  care  for  the  military  service.  At  intervals,  dependent 
on  military  operations,  the  army  leaders  interfered  drasti- 
cally, upsetting  all  system.  Cars  and  engines  were  taken 
from  one  road  to  another,  often  without  the  knowledge  of 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED  349 

the  owners,  and  never  returned.  As  railways  received  little 
aid  from  the  government,  they  were  all  in  a  bankrupt  con- 
dition. Dividends  were  unheard  of.  There  was  no  money 
to  maintain  roadbeds  and  equipment  and  there  were  no 
mechanics  to  hire. 

The  railroads  should  have  been  one  of  Jefferson  Davis's 
prime  concerns.  It  was  not  from  ignorance  of  the  impor- 
tance of  railways  that  he  neglected  them,  because  they  were 
his  particular  hobby,  but  from  lack  of  time.  Absorbed  in 
military  and  political  affairs,  he  could  not  give  himself  to 
great  administrative  questions;  and  these  matters  had  much 
to  do  with  breaking  down  the  Confederacy,  even  if  they 
were  not  decisive.  Seddon  seems  to  have  considered  the 
general  supervision  of  the  commissary  and  of  transportation 
as  within  his  province,  and  the  President  did  not  oppose  him 
though  often  he  failed  to  give  him  proper  support. 

Davis  seems  to  have  left  the  navy  largely  to  Mallory, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was  interested  in  it  and  gave  it 
more  time  than  many  other  matters.  Mallory  was  one  of 
the  most  generally  disliked  officials  in  the  government,  but 
he  was,  in  reality,  a  man  of  ability  and  initiative.  Without 
navy  yards,  without  materials  and  without  seamen,  the 
South  showed  wonderful  resourcefulness  on  the  water,  and 
some  of  the  credit  certainly  attaches  to  Mallory.  In  spite 
of  every  disadvantage  under  which  it  is  possible  to  labor, 
the  Confederates  had  an  ironclad  ready  before  the  Union- 
ists, and  the  Merrimac  played  havoc  with  the  wooden  sail- 
ing ships  of  the  North.  In  the  West,  the  Confederates  built 
rams  which  were  usually  burned  before  completion  but  which 
on  several  occasions  won  impressive  victories  over  Union 
fleets.  The  Southerners  launched  the  first  workable  sub- 
marine and  blew  up  the  first  ship  sunk  by  a  torpedo.     In 


350  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

fact,  they  made  the  torpedo  an  instrument  of  marine  war- 
fare.   This  is  a  very  creditable  list  of  achievements. 

The  ordnance  department  was  under  Josiah  Gorgas,  the 
best  selection  that  could  have  been  made.  The  man  was  a 
genius,  as  his  son  was  after  him.  He  manufactured  excellent 
cannon.  The  Confederate  chemists  showed  great  ingenuity 
in  securing  explosive  materials.  Davis,  as  a  soldier,  took 
much  interest  in  ordnance  and  rifle  manufacture.  The  coun- 
try was  terribly  handicapped  by  the  lack  of  small  arms  in 
1 86 1  and  1862;  but  this  deficiency  was  overcome  by  energy 
and  resourcefulness.  Large  quantities  of  Enfield  rifles  were 
imported  and  manufactured,  and  Pemberton's  infantry  was 
better  armed  at  Vicksburg  than  Grant's.  Indeed,  when  we 
consider  the  difference  between  the  resources  of  the  Union 
and  those  of  the  Confederacy — the  world-wide  opportunities 
of  the  one  and  the  narrow  limitations  of  the  other — we  must 
concede  that  in  some  respects  the  Southern  government  was 
more  alert  than  the  Northern. 

All  this  goes  to  show  that  the  Confederate  government 
would  have  been  immeasurably  more  efficient  if  Jefferson 
Davis  had  left  troop  movements  and  military  operations  to 
the  generals  and  devoted  himself  strictly  to  administration. 
Much  doubt  has  been  cast  on  his  executive  ability,  but 
largely  because  of  the  many  things  he  was  forced  to  neglect 
in  order  to  devote  himself  to  the  conduct  of  the  war.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  he  seems  not  to  have  been  wanting  in 
capacity  as  an  administrator.  His  plantation  was  a 
model  and  he  made  a  great  record  as  a  Secretary  of 
War.  But  nothing  is  more  exacting  than  administra- 
tion, and  Davis  was  hampered  by  his  various  inter- 
ests and  his  ill  health,  the  result  of  overwork  and  worry. 
He  was  in  a  state  of  nerve  depletion  through  the  entire 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED         351 

war.  His  efficiency  was  much  lessened  by  this  condition 
of  nervous  prostration.  Yet  in  spite  of  weak  nerves  he 
managed  to  do  a  great  deal  of  work.  Hardly  a  detail  of 
army  administration,  outside  of  the  commissary  and  quar- 
termaster departments,  escaped  his  notice.  He  seems  to  have 
passed  personally  on  every  commission  issued.  He  was  in 
constant  correspondence  with  all  the  departmental  command- 
ers and  with  other  officers.  He  carefully  scrutinized  the  de- 
tails of  every  campaign  and  seems  to  have  known  the  dis- 
position of  all  the  military  forces  in  the  country.  The  pity 
is  that  he  did  all  this.  Spending  his  hours  in  industri- 
ously supervising  the  military  routine,  he  neglected  those 
other  factors  that  no  revolutionary  leader  can  afford  to 
overlook. 

In  fact,  the  greatest  of  Jefferson  Davis's  sins  of  omission 
was  his  failure  to  realize  that  he  was  a  revolutionary  chief. 
He  looked  on  himself  as  a  constitutional  ruler,  forgetful  of 
the  fact  that  the  government  had  first  to  win  independence. 
He  was  careful  to  obey  the  laws  himself  and  he  bitterly 
resented  any  invasion  of  his  prerogatives.  He  was  jealous 
of  his  authority.  His  pride  led  him  to  imagine  that  he  could 
deal  on  equal  terms  with  foreign  nations;  he  did  not  realize 
that  he  was  a  suppliant  kneeling  at  the  feet  of  thrones. 
Suppliants  bring  propitiatory  gifts,  but  Jefferson  Davis  had 
no  definite  offers  to  make.  He  impatiently  awaited  recog- 
nition, feeling  that  he  was  suffering  an  injustice;  he  counted 
on  the  cotton  famine  to  force  intervention.  He  might  pos- 
sibly have  obtained  recognition  and  intervention  if  he  had 
paid  the  price  and  subordinated  the  Confederacy  to  Eng- 
land; but  he  was  too  proud  or  too  patriotic  to  do  this.  Maybe 
Davis  preferred  to  risk  conquest  by  the  Union  to  making 
an  American  country  a  European  vassal.    At  least,  he  made 


352  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

no  effort  to  gain  support  in  the  one  way  in  which  it  might 
have  been  secured. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  not  likely  that  Jefferson 
Davis  could  have  accomplished  anything  more  in  the  field  of 
diplomacy  than  he  did.  He  had  two  very  able  diplomats  in 
Benjamin  and  Slidell,  and  they  failed.  Mason,  who  was 
less  able,  also  failed,  but  he  would  have  done  little  more  if 
he  had  been  abler.  Without  the  means  of  making  advan- 
tageous proposals  to  Europe  and  with  little  money,  the 
Southern  envoys  did  about  as  much  as  they  could  have  been 
expected  to  do. 

In  domestic  politics  the  situation  was  different.  There 
much  was  to  be  gained  by  skill  and  address.  Yet  Davis 
made  no  serious  effort  in  the  field  of  home  politics  because 
he  thought  that  his  position  was  secure,  when,  in  reality, 
it  was  to  be  made.  A  mere  election  to  the  presidency  could 
not  insure  him  the  support  of  the  public.  He  had  to  win  it, 
but  he  did  not  win  it.  What  the  South  longed  for  and  never 
found — what  would  have  gone  a  long  way  toward  the  win- 
ning of  the  war — was  a  national  leader.  Lincoln  was  such  a 
leader  in  the  North,  but  Davis  was  not  in  the  South.  He 
was  a  President,  a  ruler,  a  director  of  armies  and  generals, 
but  not  the  real  head  of  a  country — not  a  beloved  and 
heroic  figure. 

At  first  he  had  some  hold  on  the  popular  imagination, 
when  he  seemed  to  be  the  man  of  destiny  and  the  organizer 
of  victory.  This  passed  in  1863,  with  defeat.  He  was 
never  really  popular  at  any  time;  he  was  never  close  to  any 
class  in  the  country.  He  successively  alienated  every  class. 
The  planter  politicians  early  turned  against  him  because  they 
disliked  his  masterful  ways.  His  ways  were  masterful, 
partly  because  he  was  too  busy  and  too  nervous  to  play 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED         353 

the  courtier.  Toombs,  Stephens,  Wigfall,  Rhett,  Yancey — 
all  hated  him.  They  accordingly  tended,  especially  Stephens, 
to  play  the  part  of  tribunes  opposing  an  attempted  dictator. 
Cobb,  Barnwell,  Hunter  and  Hill  were  on  his  side,  but  love 
is  a  feeble  passion  compared  with  hate.  And,  indeed,  of 
these  friends,  Cobb  and  Barnwell  were  the  only  disinterested 
ones.  Hill  was  a  politician  instinctively  deferential  to  the 
fountain  of  patronage;  Hunter  was  an  aspirant  for  the 
presidency  in  that  next  election  that  never  came. 

The  rank  and  file  of  congressmen  were  overawed  by 
Davis,  whose  strength  of  will  and  grim  tongue  daunted  them, 
but  they  never  liked  him.  They  were  never  his  friends. 
They  unwillingly  followed  him  so  long  as  he  was  successful 
and  readily  turned  against  him  when  his  mistakes  became 
scandals.  They  warred  with  him  through  the  last  days  of 
the  Confederacy. 

The  masses  admired  Davis  as  a  strong  man  and  a  great 
orator,  but  they  did  not  love  him.  Few  politicians  have  ever 
risen  so  high  with  so  little  public  favor.  The  people  do  not 
like  a  politician  the  less  for  being  proud,  but  they  want  him 
to  unbend  to  them.  It  tickles  them  to  be  courted  by  the 
great.  Jefferson  Davis  expended  no  time  and  effort  on  court- 
ing the  people  until  the  military  situation  became  ominous. 
But  then  the  people  understood  too  well  why  he  relaxed 
his  ramrod  spine. 

Jefferson  Davis  might  have  won  some  favor  if  he  had 
seemed  to  bow  to  the  popular  will.  But  with  the  perversity 
of  a  believer  in  the  divine  right  of  constitutions,  with  nerves 
exasperated  almost  beyond  control  by  labor  and  anxiety,  he 
actually  appeared  to  go  out  of  his  way  to  defy  public  opinion. 
It  was  insanity  for  a  man  in  his  position  to  stand  on  consti- 
tutional rights:  what  were  they  to  the  enemy?    He  ventured 


354  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

to  retain  Bragg  at  the  head  of  the  Western  army  when  the 
soldiers  and  the  populace  demanded  in  no  uncertain  terms 
his  removal.  Not  until  it  became  evident  that  the  army 
would  no  longer  fight  under  Bragg  was  that  officer  relieved, 
and  he  was  then  nominally  promoted. 

This  question  of  the  leadership  of  the  armies  became  the 
one  political  issue  in  the  Confederacy.  Davis  accepted  it  as 
such.  The  public  backed  Johnston  and  Johnston's  military 
policy.  Davis's  mind  was  clouded  with  passion  as  he  saw 
civilians  request  him  to  put  Forrest  on  Sherman's  com- 
munications— that  is,  presume  to  dictate  to  him,  the  Presi- 
dent, in  regard  to  military  matters !  His  dislike  and  distrust 
of  Johnston,  who  was  eagerly  upheld  by  Bragg's  enemies  and 
critics,  together  with  Bragg's  continual  misrepresentations, 
led  him  to  remove  the  former  and  stake  everything  on  the 
issue  of  battle.  If  victory  had  resulted,  Davis  would  have 
been  vindicated.  But  defeat  followed  defeat  without  inter- 
mission until  the  army  was  destroyed;  and  with  the  ruin 
of  the  army  of  Tennessee,  the  last  of  Jefferson  Davis's  credit 
with  the  public  disappeared.  In  the  final  months  of  the  Con- 
federacy, the  Johnston  party  forced  the  restoration  to  com- 
mand of  their  idol,  though  Lee  took  the  step,  not  Davis. 

Johnston's  return  to  the  shattered  hull  of  the  Army  of 
Tennessee  was  a  defeat  for  Davis  of  the  first  magnitude;  it 
was  the  beginning  of  a  movement  intended  to  eliminate  the 
President.  The  next  step  was  to  make  Lee  commander  in 
chief  and  take  the  management  of  the  armies  entirely  out 
of  Davis's  hands.  Lee's  refusal  to  make  use  of  the  power 
that  Congress  intended  him  to  exert  wrecked  the  revolution 
and  brought  the  Confederacy  to  a  somewhat  premature  end. 
The  South  had  soldiers  and  means  enough  to  have  resisted 
considerably  longer  if  the  people  had  still  willed  to  resist. 


WHY  THE  CONFEDERACY  FAILED  355 

But  the  public  had  utterly  lost  confidence  in  the  government, 
which  Congress  did  not  have  the  courage  to  overthrow. 
Davis  was  deeply  and  generally  disliked.  The  soldiers,  re- 
sentful at  the  government  and  fearful  for  their  families,  de- 
serted in  such  numbers  that  Lee  could  no  longer  hold  his 
lines.  This  need  not  be  regretted:  it  was,  indeed,  a  for- 
tunate circumstance.  If  Jefferson  Davis  had  been  beloved, 
if  he  had  issued  a  call  that  would  have  gone  to  the  popular 
heart,  a  guerrilla  warfare  might  have  followed  that  would 
have  devastated  the  South  far  more  than  any  regular  military 
operations.  As  it  was,  the  people  were  so  weary  of  the  gov- 
ernment that,  when  it  appeared  that  the  war  was  lost,  they 
ceased  all  resistance.    Peace  came  suddenly  and  completely. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  a  great  man  who  made  great  mis- 
takes. His  mistakes  ruined  him,  but  they  could  not  keep  him 
from  being  great.  He  put  up  an  astonishing  fight  against 
heavy  odds;  he  showed  much  energy  and  resourcefulness  in 
a  situation  of  extreme  difficulty.  Under  him  a  purely  agri- 
cultural community  held  out  long,  and  almost  successfully, 
in  the  game  of  modern  war  against  one  of  the  greatest  in- 
dustrial countries  of  the  world.  In  daring  to  draft  the  popu- 
lation of  the  free  South  for  the  army  he  showed  initiative  and 
true  courage:  it  was  the  act  of  a  strong  man.  He  made 
war  honorably,  and  his  integrity  and  manhood  cast  credit  on 
the  South. 

His  failure  was  more  that  of  temperament  than  of  brain. 
The  spirit,  indeed,  was  strong  but  the  flesh  weak.  His  in- 
telligence and  courage  were  largely  neutralized  by  his  sensi- 
tive scholar's  nature;  he  had  the  faults  of  hypochondria 
highly  developed.  He  was  jealous  of  his  prerogatives,  not 
self-effacing.  Thus  he  missed  the  way  to  win  the  war. 
Censure  was  torment  to  him.    It  tended  to  develop  in  him 


356  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

the  vice  of  obstinacy.  He  was  resolved  not  to  be  dictated  to, 
forgetful  that  the  head  of  a  republic  cannot  openly  oppose 
the  popular  will:  for  him,  vox  populi  must  be  vox  Dei. 
Above  all^  Jefferson  Davis  could  not  conquer  his  aversions. 
His  likes  and  dislikes  were  too  pronounced.  A  straightfor- 
ward, honorable,  courageous  gentleman,  he  battled  with  a 
task  that  was  too  mighty  for  him  because  it  demanded  qual- 
ities he  did  not  have.  He  lacked  tact,  policy,  understanding 
of  the  man  in  the  street,  good  humor  amid  annoyances,  the 
power  to  win  and  hold  men.  But  his  greatest  lack  was  that 
of  self-renunciation.  He  could  not  bring  himself  to  step 
aside  and  put  the  conduct  of  military  operations  in  the 
hands  of  a  single  soldier,  reserving  for  himself  the  role  of 
lending  support.  If  he  had  done  so,  and  if  Lee  had  been  the 
chosen  generalissimo,  it  is  probable  that  the  Confederacy 
would  have  succeeded.  It  failed,  but  it  came  so  near  suc- 
cess as  to  make  evident  the  fine  qualities  and  high  resolu- 
tion of  the  man  into  whose  hands  were  committed  the  desti- 
nies of  the  South  on  that  February  day  of  1861.  Jefferson 
Davis  was  a  great  man,  even  if  he  was  not  great  enough  to 
triumph. 


XVI 

THE  MORAL 

WHAT  boots  it  to  speak  of  what  Jefferson  Davis  did 
or  did  not  do  after  1865?  That  was  the  death  of  his 
soul:  does  it  matter  that,  more  unconscionable  than  Charles 
II,  he  was  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  physically  dying?  Like 
most  neurotics,  he  had  a  strong  constitution,  and  four  years 
of  intense  anxiety  hurt  him  but  little.  Always  sick,  he  did 
not  die,  and  he  might  have  lived  many  years  longer  if  an 
inconvenient  cold  had  not  carried  him  off  at  last  at  a  mod- 
erate old  age.  He  altered  greatly  in  his  last  years.  The 
hawklike  face  of  the  Nordic  leader  became  venerable  and 
benevolent,  making  him  resemble  a  meditative  clergyman. 
It  bore  no  trace  of  the  earlier  fires. 

Having  no  money  at  the  close  of  the  war,  Jefferson  Davis 
went  into  business.  He  managed  to  get  along — little  more. 
It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  a  man  who  had  endured  the 
fierce  light  that  beats  more  strongly  even  on  Presidents  than 
kings  would  make  a  good  routine  business  man,  and  he  did 
not.  Some  of  his  enterprises  failed  sadly.  Yet  great  historic 
figures  seldom  starve,  and  Jefferson  Davis  was  no  exception. 
His  last  years  were  fairly  free  from  financial  worry. 

Davis  spent  two  years,  from  1865  to  1867,  in  prison,  a 
part  of  the  time  in  chains.  This  was  a  fortunate  indignity 
for  him.  Intensely  unpopular  in  the  South  when  the  Con- 
federacy collapsed,  he  gained  sympathy  as  a  post-war  suf- 

357 


358  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

ferer  for  the  cause.  The  South  forgot  his  faults  and  his 
mistakes  and  only  remembered  that  though  he  was  not  pri- 
marily responsible  for  secession  he  was  a  martyr  for  the 
principle  of  secession.  The  Union  government  could  not 
have  let  him  go  at  large  immediately.  It  would  have  pre- 
ferred his  escape  abroad,  but  it  could  not  rebuke  the  over- 
zealous  cavalrymen  who  captured  him. 

It  did  not  try  him:  it  did  not  want  to  try  him.  He  was 
no  longer  dangerous;  his  blood  would  do  nobody  any  good. 
Besides,  a  trial  must  have  aired  constitutional  principles,  and 
in  court  the  Union  might  not  have  come  off  so  well  as  on  the 
battlefield.  Davis's  lawyers  were  ready,  and  they  might 
have  come  uncomfortably  near  proving  that  secession  was 
legal,  whatever  it  might  be  otherwise.  So  Jefferson  Davis 
was  released  on  bond  and  was  never  molested  again  by  the 
United  States  government.  His  principal  achievement  in 
later  life  was  his  memoir  of  the  war,  which,  as  Gama- 
liel Bradford  points  out,  tells  us  everything  we  are  not 
interested  in  and  carefully  avoids  the  things  we  wish  to 
know.  It  is  the  book  of  a  man  who  has  put  off  writing 
too  long. 

Before  he  died  Jefferson  Davis  had  the  satisfaction  of 
seeing  the  South  well  started  on  the  road  to  material  re- 
covery. The  Reconstruction  was  over,  and  out  of  that  epic 
struggle  the  white  race  had  emerged  scarred  but  victorious. 
Perhaps  Davis,  in  his  inmost  soul,  may  have  believed  that 
it  was  better  that  he  failed.  He  was  not  bitter  or  depressed: 
what  was  far  better,  he  was  not  resigned.  He  seems  to  have 
been  rather  happy.  His  conscience  was  perfectly  clear  and 
he  was  gratified  to  find  that  the  popularity  which  had  been 
denied  him  in  his  active  life  was  abundantly  his.  Every- 
where he  went  in  the  South  he  was  greeted  with  marks  of 


THE  MORAL  359 

affection.  He  was  the  President  of  the  South.  It  was  by 
no  means  a  forlorn  glory. 

What  shall  we  say  of  him  now  after  this  long  time?  The 
South  respects  him  but  it  is  almost  glad  that  he  was  not 
quite  great  enough  to  succeed.  The  South  is  well  satisfied 
to  be  a  part  of  the  Union.  It  still  differs  politically  from 
the  North,  but  this  difference  is  more  the  result  of  habit 
and  tradition  than  of  thought.  The  South  maintains,  as  it 
should,  that  secession  was  justified  and  that  Jefferson  Davis 
was  right,  but  it  feels  that  out  of  the  evil  of  defeat  and 
political  overthrow  Providence  has  brought  good.  What 
happened  happened  for  the  best.  The  Southern  mood  is 
wholly  optimistic. 

Yet  we  are  just  beginning  to  see  the  significance  of  the 
Civil  War.  Our  mood  has  been,  perhaps,  too  optimistic. 
The  defeat  of  disunion  and  the  overthrow  of  slavery  seemed 
unmitigated  benefits.  Davis  and  Lee  have  been  pictured  as 
noble — as  they  were — but  as  mistaken,  as  possibly  they 
were  not.  The  Civil  War  is  coming  under  the  ken  of  the 
New  History,  and  Madison  Grant's  tonens  not  one  altogether 
of  congratulation.    He  plainly  doubts. 

The  truth  is  that  the  Confederacy  was  a  milestone  on  the 
progress  of  the  Nordic  race  to  nothingness.  It  was  a  Nordic 
protest  against  a  leveling  age,  against  the  principle  of  level- 
ing. There  was  democracy  in  the  South,  but  it  was  the 
democracy  of  conquerors.  There  was  no  brotherhood  with 
the  weak.  The  South  discovered  democracy  and  repudiated 
it.  The  inequality  of  races  was  its  creed,  though  it  wor- 
shiped the  Moses  who  proclaimed  equality.  Democracy 
withered  in  the  South,  not  so  much  because  the  South  was 
slaveholding  as  because  it  was  Nordic.  This  is  the  fact  the 
world  does  not  understand.    If  the  South  had  not  been  Nor- 


360  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

die,  democracy  would  have  made  it  free  the  slaves.  If  de- 
mocracy had  suited  the  genius  of  the  South,  slavery  would 
not  have  lasted.  Because  slavery  suited  the  genius  of  the 
South  it  lasted.  The  South  is  responsible  for  slavery  rather 
than  slavery  for  the  South.  Slavery  was  a  result,  not  a 
cause. 

Slavery  endured  because  it  was  the  natural  relation  be- 
tween Nordic  master  and  African  man.  Slavery  de  facto 
survived  the  war,  though  slavery  de  lege  expired.  Slavery 
outlasted  the  war  a  generation,  only  the  slaves  were  rebel- 
lious, seeking  to  put  themselves  on  top.  The  blacks  were 
slaves,  in  that  they  looked  on  themselves  as  slaves  and  on 
the  whites  as  masters.  Slavery  survived  war,  reconstruc- 
tion, humanitarianism,  democratic  propaganda — everything, 
until  industrialism  came  to  the  South.  Then  it  died. 
Economic  forces  accomplished  what  Christian  religion  and 
rationalistic  philosophy,  working  together,  could  not  do. 
When  the  blacks  became  factory  hands  and  mill  workers 
alongside  white  men,  they  ceased  to  be  slaves  and  became  a 
part  of  the  great  industrial  class. 

It  is  because  Nordicism  is  dying  and  non-Nordicism  tri- 
umphant that  slavery  is  dead.  The  Civil  War,  as  has  been 
said  before,  was  in  essence  a  conflict  between  Nordic  and 
non-Nordic  principles:  between  individualism  and  com- 
munism; between  agriculture  and  industrialism;  between 
democracy  and  aristocracy;  between  the  world  order  of  the 
past  and  that  of  the  future. 

All  this  should  be  taken  into  consideration  in  passing 
moral  judgments  on  the  Civil  War.  At  first  sight  it  might 
seem  that  the  North  was  right,  at  least  that  it  had  the  better 
side.  The  Northern  idealists  were  splendid  men:  liberty, 
equality,  fraternity — without  distinction  of  races — are  high 


THE  MORAL  361 

and  generous  things.  Against  them  stands  the  race  instinct 
for  which  the  South  fought.  The  South  fought  for  the  race 
which  has  made  the  world  what  it  is,  for  the  agricultural  or- 
ganization of  life,  for  political  conservatism,  for  social  order. 
And  it  is  fair  to  ask  the  question  whether,  in  the  last  analysis, 
such  things  may  not  be  better  than  the  championship  of 
humanity  and  the  propagation  of  democracy.  Between  the 
two  groups  of  Nordics  fighting  a  mighty  fight  was  this  differ- 
ence— that  one  fought  for  the  Nordic  race,  the  other  against 
it.  The  victory  of  the  North  meant  the  predominance  of  the 
non-Nordic  elements  in  American  life.  It  meant  the  freeing 
of  the  slave,  the  trampling  of  agriculture  by  industrialism, 
the  rise  of  labor  to  be  a  great  power,  the  overthrow  of  in- 
dividualism. This  consideration  should  teach  us  the  good 
and  evil  on  both  sides  in  the  Civil  War.  We  should  no 
longer  look  on  Jefferson  Davis  and  Robert  E.  Lee  as  good 
but  mistaken  men:  we  should  see  that  they  may  not  have 
been  mistaken  at  all — that  the  mistake  may  have  been  on 
the  other  side.  But  this  is  a  question  that  cannot  be  an- 
swered even  now,  but  in  the  future. 

The  chief  result  of  the  Civil  War  was  the  ruin  it  brought 
on  the  Nordic  race  in  America.  The  Nordic  empire  of  the 
tropics  was  now  a  vanished  bubble.  The  Nordic  population 
of  the  South  was  decimated:  the  best  of  a  generation  were 
destroyed.  The  war  also  took  a  terrible  toll  of  the  Northern 
Nordics,  who  filled  the  armies  while  the  non-Nordics  mainly 
stayed  at  home  and  prospered.  The  North,  which  was  still 
largely  Nordic  before  the  war,  had  altogether  altered  by  its 
close. 

In  the  more  than  half  century  since  the  great  struggle, 
immigration  has  swamped  the  Nordic  race  in  America.  The 
New  England  of  to-day,  for  instance,  contains  a  thin  Nordic 


362  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

upper  class  and  a  mass  of  factory  workers  of  almost  wholly 
non-Nordic  stock.  There  are  cities  of  non-Nordics  sur- 
rounded by  Nordic  farmers.  The  Nordic  element  in  our 
population  is  constantly  decreasing  in  proportion  to  the  non- 
Nordic,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  still  mainly  Nordic  South 
the  United  States  would  represent  a  racial  revolution.  It 
would  be  the  story  of  the  supplanting  of  one  race  by  another. 
But  so  long  as  the  South  remains  Nordic  the  old  America 
is  still  with  us. 

Yet  the  South  is  changing,  and  the  time  must  come  when 
it,  like  the  rest  of  the  country,  will  be  largely  non-Nordic. 
This  transformation  will  be  attended  by  tremendous  conse- 
quences. The  Nordic  race  is  that  which  is  preeminent  in 
war,  law,  politics,  exploration,  adventure.  Spain  fell  be- 
cause it  wasted  its  small  Nordic  population  in  the  wars  and 
conquests  of  the  sixteenth  century:  this,  not  the  Inquisition, 
ruined  it.  Europe  to-day  is  relatively  feeble  because  it  has 
spent  its  Nordic  population  in  the  wars  of  the  past  few  cen- 
turies: everywhere  the  non-Nordics  gain  at  the  expense  of 
the  Nordics.  It  was  because  the  United  States  was  chiefly 
settled  by  Nordics  from  Great  Britain,  Holland,  Germany 
and  France  that  it  was  and  is  still  great.  In  early  times  only 
brave  and  enterprising  men  crossed  the  seas:  the  mass  of 
people  stayed  at  home.  But  quick  travel  and  easy  condi- 
tions changed  all  this,  and  for  two  generations  a  vast  non- 
Nordic  population,  from  central,  southern,  and  eastern 
Europe  and  western  Asia,  has  poured  into  this  country. 

A  few  years  ago  we  thought,  in  our  optimism,  that  we 
could  Nordicize — or  Americanize — these  aliens  by  getting 
them  to  wave  the  flag  and  sing  "The  Star-Spangled  Banner." 
We  thought  that  reading  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
made  Nordics  of  non-Nordics.    We  no  longer  think  so,  and 


THE  MORAL  363 

the  menace  of  a  population  unappreciative  of  Nordic  ideals 
and  incapable  of  working  Nordic  institutions  fills  us  with 
grave  alarm. 

The  American  people  of  to-day  are  no  longer  adapted  to 
American  institutions.  Representative  government  is  the  su- 
preme fruit  of  the  Nordic  race.  Because  England  was  the 
most  Nordic  of  countries,  representative  government  grew 
to  perfection  there.  We  inherited  it.  But  only  Ulysses  can 
draw  the  bow  of  Ulysses.  Our  political  institutions  worked 
well  enough  so  long  as  the  American  people  were  mainly  of 
one  race  and  had  a  political  class  such  as  the  Southern 
planters  to  direct  them.  The  government  of  the  United 
States  between  1789  and  1861  was  the  best  the  world  has 
ever  seen:  it  was  clean,  efficient,  economical.  But  when  the 
political  class  was  overthrown,  when  business  men  came  into 
the  saddle  instead  of  agriculture  and  the  power  of  the  non- 
Nordic  industrial  classes  began  to  be  felt,  the  United  States 
declined  politically,  and  the  decline  has  steadily  continued. 
Occasional  flurries  of  reform  should  not  blind  us  to  the 
fact  that  we  are  weaker  politically  than  we  were  a  genera- 
tion ago  and  that  we  grow  weaker.  The  institutions  which 
suited  an  agricultural  community  are  not  fitted  to  meet  the 
conditions  of  a  great  industrial  empire.  We  no  longer  func- 
tion properly. 

The  planters  justified  their  rule  by  ruling.  If  they  reaped 
the  rewards  of  government,  they  did  its  work.  Generally, 
they  did  it  well.  But  the  men  who  succeeded  them,  the 
financiers  and  manufacturers,  were  too  busy  to  govern. 
They  ruled,  but  through  instruments.  So  the  new  species  of 
order-taking  politicians  rose  in  the  land — representatives 
and  employees  of  special  industries.  For  a  time  America 
was  governed  by  these  deputies  of  big  business. 


364  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

But  nothing  is  truer  than  that  in  order  to  govern  it  is 
necessary  to  take  the  trouble  to  govern:  government  is  not 
the  realm  of  absentee  landlords.  The  methods  of  the  busi- 
ness men  were  crude,  their  instruments  often  vile.  The  land 
was  filled  with  discontent  and  scandal,  with  denunciations 
of  the  trusts.  Then  other  politicians  arose:  demagogues, 
propagandists,  protagonists  of  salvation  by  special  formulas. 
These  passed,  and  there  came  the  organized  groups,  seeking 
to  accomplish  particular  ends  regardless  of  the  will  of  the 
people  at  large  and  of  their  welfare.  In  a  country  becoming 
more  and  more  docile  and  less  and  less  individualistic  be- 
cause ceasing  to  be  Nordic,  anything  can  be  accomplished 
by  propaganda  and  intimidation.  Our  representatives  in 
Congress  really  represent  little  more  than  special  interests 
of  the  narrowest  sorts:  the  general  principles  of  government 
are  trampled  on  in  order  to  attain  ends  curiously  small. 

In  this  political  chaos  we  call  modern  government  one 
fact  stands  out  in  plainest  threat — the  purpose  of  the  indus- 
trial workers,  the  labor  unionists,  to  control  the  country 
politically  and  economically.  These  non-Nordics  oppose  to 
our  outworn  Nordic  institutions  their  own  naturally  com- 
munistic organization.  They  continually  grow  in  power  and 
in  boldness.  They  are  the  main  menace  of  the  future.  The 
prosperity  of  the  United  States  is  colossal,  awe-inspiring. 
But  what  good  will  wealth  do  if  we  become  politically 
bankrupt?  Not  money  but  sound  politics  is  the  key  of 
national  happiness. 

By  the  whirligig  of  time,  it  has  come  about  that  the  Re- 
publican party,  industrialist  though  it  be,  is  the  bulwark  of 
Nordic  rule  in  America.  It  represents  the  control  of  the 
Nordic  breed;  it  occupies  the  position  of  defender  of  con- 
servative institutions  that  was  held  by  the  Democratic  party 


THE  MORAL  365 

in  i860.  While  it  predominates,  the  old  republic  will  con- 
tinue to  exist.  Its  fall  will  mean  the  beginning  of  revolution. 
The  modern  Democratic  party,  dominated  by  labor  and  non- 
Nordic  (except  in  the  South),  has  become  an  instrument  of 
economic  transformation. 

Social  revolution  is  the  only  end  to  the  conditions  under 
which  we  live.  The  Nordics  cannot  put  back  the  clock — do 
away  with  democracy  and  restore  the  old  natural  relation  of 
master  and  man.  The  non-Nordics  must  go  on  prevailing 
to  the  end.  They  will  overthrow  the  last  vestiges  of  individ- 
ualism and  make  some  form  of  communism  the  order  of  the 
nation  and  probably  of  the  world.  We  shall  follow  Russia 
afar. 

This  does  not  mean  that  we  shall  have  the  experiences  of 
Russia;  it  is  probable  that  we  shall  not.  Our  social  revolu- 
tion is  likely  to  be  gradual,  with  only  incidental  violence. 
And  it  is  possible  that,  in  the  final  outcome,  the  condition  of 
America  and  of  the  world  will  not  be  worse  than  at  present. 
It  may  be  better  because  more  stable.  Since  Nordic  institu- 
tions are  not  adapted  to  modern  populations  and  modern 
economic  conditions,  they  will  go.  Our  archaic  Constitution 
will  be  replaced  by  one  more  in  conformity  with  modern 
needs. 

We  must  reconcile  ourselves  to  a  dull  level  of  population. 
There  will  be  no  heroes  and  no  miserables.  All  men  will  be 
tolerably  efficient.  The  happiness  of  the  masses  may  be 
greater  than  at  any  time  in  the  past.  Life  will  be  strictly 
ordered,  but  men  will  be  compensated  by  greater  security 
for  the  loss  of  individual  initiative  and  personal  liberty. 
War  may  come  to  an  end  because  of  stable  equilibrium. 
The  future  of  the  world  may  be  better  than  the  past.  When 
the  great  gulf  of  non-Nordic  humanity  swallows  up  the 


366  JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

Nordics,  it  may  be  because  the  master  race  has  done  its 
civilizing  work. 

But  what  has  Jefferson  Davis  to  do  with  all  this?  Much. 
The  Southern  Confederacy  was,  essentially,  a  protest  against 
modernity.  It  was  an  attempt  to  disregard  altruistic  ideals 
and  find  reality  again.  It  was,  above  all,  the  effort  of  the 
Nordic  race  to  save  itself.  If  it  had  succeeded,  there  would 
have  been  a  new  chapter  in  history.  There  would  have  been 
a  great  Nordic  empire  which  might  have  reached  from  the 
Potomac  to  Cape  Horn.  All  this  lay  in  the  womb  of  the 
Confederacy. 

Success  depended,  in  the  last  analysis,  on  Jefferson  Davis. 
He  failed.  Not  from  lack  of  brains,  for  he  had  a  good 
mind,  and  not  from  want  of  character,  for  he  was  a  strong 
man.  But  from  temperament.  He  did  not  have  the  faculty 
of  success:  the  power  to  grapple  men  to  him,  absolute  self- 
forgetfulness.  So  he  failed,  and  with  him  faded  the  last  hope 
of  the  Nordic  race. 


INDEX 


Atchison,  David  A.,  urges  Douglas 

to  organize  territories,  70 
Atlanta,  fall  of,  309 

Barnwell,  Robert,  leader  in  Nash- 
ville convention,  58;  works  for 
Davis,  no;  declines  cabinet  post, 
124 

Bell,  John,  nominated  for  President, 

93 

Benjamin,  Judah  P.,  supports  Bu- 
chanan, 83 ;  Attorney-General, 
125-126;  sketch  of,  136;  Secre- 
tary of  War,  152;  Secretary  of 
State,    168 

Beauregard,  G.  P.  T.,  appointed 
general,  145;  plans  to  attack 
McDowell,  147 ;  removed  from 
command,  181;  blockade,  sketch 
of,   131 

Bragg,  Braxton,  made  army  com- 
mander, 181 ;  invades  Kentucky, 
183,  185;  incompetent  for  com- 
mand, 186;  fights  battle  of  Mur- 
freesboro,  195 ;  army  dissatisfied 
with,  195;  tries  himself  before 
officers,  197;  supported  by  John- 
ston, 198-203;  dislikes  Johnston, 
237;  attacks  Rosecrans,  246;  at 
feud  with  his  generals,  247 ;  sug- 
gests offensive  command  in  order 
to  discredit  Johnston,  247-248; 
in  ascendent  at  Richmond,  279; 
goes  to  Atlanta,  302-304 

Breckinridge,  John  C,  nominated 
for  President,  93 ;  Secretary  of 
War,  332 

Brown,  John,  raid  of,  89 

Brown,  Governor  Joseph,  secession 
leader,  102 ;  opposes  Davis,  241 ; 
asks  for  Forrest's  cavalry,  296; 
approached  by  Sherman,  300 

Buchanan,  James,  cannot  take  Cal- 


houn's place,  42 ;  won  over  to 
annexation  of  Mexico,  47;  minis- 
ter to  England,  66,  67;  elected 
President,  77 ;  policy  of  in  Kan- 
sas, 83;  leader  of  Democratic 
party,  92 
Buell,  Don  Carlos,  in  Kentucky,  167 
Burnside,  Ambrose  A.,  defeated  at 
Fredericksburg,  192 

Calhoun,  John  C,  aims  of,  25; 
makes  treaty  with  Texas,  27;  op- 
poses Mexican  War,  41 

California,  admitted  to  the  Union, 

59 

Cass,  Lewis,  originates  squatter 
sovereignty,  52 ;  defeated  for 
President,   54 

Chancellorsville,  battle   of,   213 

Charleston,  Democratic  convention 
meets  at,  92 

Chickamauga,  battle  of,  246 

Clay,  Henry,  arranges  Compromise 
of  1850,  57;  genius  of,  59 

Cleburne,  Patrick,  suggests  enlist- 
ment of  blacks,  269,  272;  at  Mis- 
sionary Ridge,  253;  death  of,  314 

Cobb,  Howell,  president  of  secession 
convention,  2 ;  influence  of  with 
Buchanan,  83;  secession  leader, 
102 ;  elected  Dresident  of  conven- 
tion, 105 

Cooper,    A.    S.,    appointed    general, 

MS 
Cushing,  Caleb,  confers  with  Davis, 
88;    leader   in   Democratic   party, 
92 

Davis,  Jefferson,  elected  by  seces- 
sion convention,  3;  birth  of,  29; 
early  education  of,  30;  goes 
through  West  Point,  31;  first 
marriage   of,  31;    acquires  Brier- 


367 


368 


INDEX 


field,  32;  reading  of,  35;  manage- 
ment of  slaves  by,  35 ;  enters  pol- 
itics, 37;  second  marriage  of,  39, 
leaves  Congress  for  Mexican  War, 
42;  at  Monterey,  43;  at  Buena 
Vista,  45;  enters  United  States 
Senate,  46;  a  nationalist  in  1848, 
50;  seeks  to  extend  Missouri 
Compromise  line  to  Pacific,  51 ; 
becomes  a  Southern  extremist,  55; 
opposes  Compromise  of  1850,  58, 
61;  becomes  candidate  for  gov- 
ernor, 62 ;  becomes  a  Unionist, 
63;  Secretary  of  War,  64,  65; 
plans  Southern  expansion,  66;  no 
intriguer,  69;  aids  Douglas,  73; 
makes  blunder  on  Kansas-Ne- 
braska bill,  75 ;  on  Dred  Scott 
opinion,  80;  reenters  Senate,  81; 
sends  free-soil  soldier  to  Kansas, 
83 ;  Southern  leader  in  Senate,  84, 
85;  becomes  a  moderate,  87; 
tours  the  North,  88;  hatred  of 
for  Douglas,  90;  works  to  defeat 
Douglas  for  presidency,  92 ;  reso- 
lutions of  adopted  by  Charleston 
platform  committee,  93 ;  seeks  to 
induce  Douglas  to  withdraw,  94; 
counsels  delay  in  secession,  95; 
resigns  from  Senate,  97 ;  dis- 
trusted by  Rhett,  no;  why  elect- 
ed President  of  South,  in;  char- 
acteristics of,  1 1 6-1 19;  reaches 
Montgomery,  120;  selects  a  cab- 
inet, 123-127;  as  President  in 
Montgomery,  127;  foreign  policy 
of,  134,  135;  begins  to  lose  con- 
fidence of  politicians,  141;  influ- 
ence of  Virginia  on  144;  at  First 
Manassas,  148;  decides  not  to  in- 
vade North,  153;  makes  mistakes 
in  1861,  160;  advisers  of,  164, 
189;  inauguration  of,  169;  social 
relaxations  of,  171;  secures  draft 
act,  175;  in  Seven  Days'  battle, 
179;  loses  support  of  politicians, 
187;  goes  West  in  1862,  196;  puz- 
zled over  Bragg,  202 ;  too  busy 
with  military  details,  211;  popu- 
larity of  wanes,  212;  at  Jackson's 
bier,    213;    urges    Pemberton    to 


hold  Vicksburg,  214;  wishes  to 
reinforce  West,  221;  calls  cabinet 
conference  on  Pennsylvania  in- 
vasion, 224;  fails  to  help  Lee, 
226;  writes  Lee,  235;  in  a  food 
riot,  240;  criticized  as  unconsti- 
tutional, 242;  sends  aid  to  West, 
245;  goes  West  in  1863,  249;  up- 
holds Bragg,  250;  to  blame  for 
Missionary  Ridge,  254;  mistaken 
in  Pennsylvania  campaign,  258; 
preference  of  for  trained  soldiers, 
262;  gives  Johnston  command  of 
Western  army,  264;  refuses  to 
enlist  blacks,  273;  abandons  hope 
of  foreign  aid,  289;  loses  a  son, 
290;  religion  of,  291;  failure  of, 
310;  accomplishment  of,  311; 
makes  his  greatest  speech,  325; 
seeks  to  enlist  blacks,  325;  op- 
posed by  Congress,  327;  makes 
Lee  commander  in  chief,  328; 
flees  from  Richmond,  333;  im- 
prisonment of,  335;  supreme  mis- 
take of,  343;  good  judge  of  men, 
345;  last  political  defeat  of,  354; 
qualities  of,  355;  released  from 
prison,  358 

Davis,  Joseph  Emory,  helps  Jeffer- 
son Davis,  30 

Davis,  Varina  Anne  Howell,  mar- 
ries Jefferson  Davis,  39;  helps  her 
husband,  128 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  introduces 
Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  71;  wins 
over  Pierce,  73 ;  becomes  unpop- 
ular, 77;  regains  popularity,  82; 
denounces  Buchanan,  83 ;  leader 
in  Senate,  84;  only  man  able  to 
avert  secession,  90;  nominated 
for  presidency  by  Baltimore  con- 
ventionj  93;  denounces  Davis,  94 

Dred  Scott  opinion,  announced  by 
Supreme  Court,  79;  of  little 
value,  90 

Early,  Jubal  A.,  at  Gettysburg,  227 ; 

cursing  of,  292 
Ewell,  R.  E.,  at  Gettysburg,  227 

Foote,  Henry  S.,  elected  governor 
of  Mississippi,   62;    attacks   Ben- 


INDEX 


369 


jamin   in   Congress,    168;    attacks 
Davis  in  Congress,  266;  demands 
surrender,  323 
Fort  Donelson,  surrender  of,  167 
Fort  Sumter,  fired  on,  138 
Franklin,   battle  of,  314 
Fredericksburg,  battle  of,  192 
Fugitive  Slave  law,  passed  by  Con- 
gress,   60;    no   measure    of    lower 
South,  61 

Gadsden,   James,   acquires    Gadsden 

Purchase,  68 
Gadsden  Purchase,  made,  68 
Gettysburg,  battle  of,  227-230;  im- 
portance of  overrated,  234 
Gorgas,  Josiah,   a  ^enius,  350 
Grant,   U.   S.,   threatens   Tennessee, 
167;     threatens    Vicksburg,     204- 
207;     defeats     Pemberton,     215; 
captures  Vicksburg,  233;  at  Mis- 
sionary  Ridge,   253;   grand  strat- 
egy of,  283;  in  Virginia,  284-288; 
attacks    Petersburg,    286;     career 
of,  333,  334 

Hardee,  W.  J.,  distrusts  Bragg,  107; 
refuses  army  command,  263 

Hill,  A.  P.,  at  Gettysburg,  227 

Hill,  Benjamin  H.,  Unionist  leader 
in  Georgia,  102 ;  goes  to  Rich- 
mond for  Johnston,  298 

Hill,  D.  H.,  suspended  from  his 
command,  247 

Hood,  John  B.,  urges  Western  of- 
fensive, 277;  Lee's  opinion  of, 
393;  becomes  army  commander, 
307;  defeated  by  Sherman,  309; 
invades  Tennessee,  313;  retreat 
of,  3i5 

Hooker,  Joseph,  attacks  Lee,  212 

Hunter,  R.  M.  T.,  leader  in  Nash- 
ville convention,  58;  supports 
Buchanan,  83 ;  member  of  Senate 
compromise  committee,  96;  heads 
Virginia  delegation  to  Montgom- 
ery, 140 ;  friend  of  Davis,  143 ; 
peace  commissioner,  324 

Jackson,  Andrew,  refuses  to  recog- 
nize nullification,  26 
Jackson,  Stonewall,  in  Valley  cam- 


paign, 179;  at  Second  Manassas, 
182 ;  captures  Harper's  Ferry, 
183 ;  wishes  to  fight  on  North 
Anna,  191 ;  at  Fredericksburg, 
193;   mortally  wounded,  213 

Johnston,  Albert  Sidney,  appointed 
general,  145;  unpopularity  of, 
172;  death  of,  173 

Johnston,  Herschel  V.,  Unionist 
leader  in  Georgia,  102 

Johnston,  Joseph  E.,  appointed  gen- 
eral, 145 ;  fails  to  pursue  McDow- 
ell, 150;  wounded,  178;  made 
Western  departmental  command- 
er, 194;  supports  Bragg,  198-203; 
in  Mississippi,  214;  seeks  to  save 
Pemberton,  231-233;  commander 
of  Western  army,  263;  fails  to 
invade  Tennessee,  277;  improves 
Western  army,  292 ;  defensive 
soldier,  293;  retreat  of,  294-304; 
asks  for  Forrest's  cavalry,  296, 
297;  relieved  of  command,  306; 
reappointed  to  command,  328 

Kansas,  bill  for  organization  of, 
71;  South  no  reason  to  hope  to 
gain,  75 ;  a  country  for  poor  im- 
migrants, 76;  struggle  for,  78; 
lost  to  South,  82 

Kennesaw  Mountain,  fight  at,   294 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  engineer  officer  in 
Mexico,  45;  appointed  general, 
145;  opposes  evacuation  of  pen- 
insula, 175;  made  military  ad- 
viser, 177;  army  commander, 
178;  attacks  McClellan,  179;  at 
Second  Manassas,  182;  invades 
Maryland,  183;  at  Fredericks- 
burg, 193;  frustrates  Hooker, 
213;  fails  to  read  general  mili- 
tary problem,  217;  should  have 
gone  West,  219,  220;  persuades 
Davis  to  invade  North,  221;  in- 
vades Pennsylvania,  226;  why  he 
failed  at  Gettysburg,  230;  offers 
to  resign,  235;  in  the  Wilderness, 
284,  285;  consulted  by  Davis, 
303;  national  leader  of  South, 
316;  demands  negro  soldiers,  325, 


370 


INDEX 


326;  made  commander  in  chief, 
328;  surrender  of,  333 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  elected  Presi- 
dent, 94;  opposes  compromise, 
96;  sketch  of,  283;  at  Hampton 
Roads  Conference,  324 

Longstreet,  James,  at  council  of 
war,  175;  at  Second  Manassas, 
182;  at  Gettysburg,  227-229;  sent 
West,  246;  criticizes  Bragg,  248; 
detached  from  Western  army,  251 

Lyons,  James,  friend  of  Davis,  143 ; 
confers  with   Count   Mercier,   174 

McClellan,  George  B.,  advances  to 
Richmond,  177,  178;  defeat  of  in 
Seven  Days'  battle,  179 

McDowell,  Irvin,  attacks  Beaure- 
gard, 148 

Mallory,  Stephen  B.,  Secretary  of 
Navy,   125;   ability  of,  349 

Marcy,  William  L.,  settles  with 
Spain  Black  Warrior  matter,  67 

Manassas,  First  battle  of,  148 

Manassas,  Second  battle  of,  182 

Mason,  James  M.,  sent  as  envoy  to 
England,  157-159 

Mason,  John  Y.,  minister  to  France, 
66,  67 

Meade,  George  Gordon,  commands 
Union  army,  226;  at  Gettysburg, 
227 

Memminger,  Christopher,  Secretary 
of  Treasury,  124;  financial  policy 
of,  129-132;   resigns,  280 

Mercier,  Count,  comes  to  Rich- 
mond,  173 

Merrimac,   built,    161 

Miles,  William  Porcher,  at  seces- 
sion convention,  2 

Missionary   Ridge,   battle   of,   253 

Missouri  Compromise,  what  it  was, 
22  ;  Davis  seeks  to  extend  to  Pa- 
cific, 51 ;  repeal  of,  72 

Montgomery,  secession  convention 
at,  1 ;  deputies  meet  at,  103 ; 
Davis's   reception   at,   127 

Murfreesboro  (Stone's  River),  bat- 
tle of,   195 

Myers,  Quartermaster-General,  up- 
held by  Congress,  269 


Napoleon  III  embarrasses  England, 

133;    brought    over    to    Southern 

side,  159 
Nashville,  battle  of,  315 
Nebraska,   bill   for   organization    of, 

71;    not   contested   by   South,    74 
New    Mexico,    in    Compromise    of 

1850,  60 
Northrop,   Commissary-General,  266, 

268;  ability  of,  346 

Oregon,  struggle  over  organization 
of,  51;  contest  over  weakens  alli- 
ance of  West  and  South,  53 

Ostend  Manifesto,  what  was,  67 

Pemberton,  John  C,  sketch  of,  204; 
defeated,  215;  resolves  to  hold 
Vicksburg,  216;  surrenders,  233 

Pierce,  Franklin,  makes  Davis  a 
cabinet  officer,  64 

Polk,  James  K.,  elected  President, 
27;  seeks  to  gain  Texas  and  Ore- 
gon, 40;  accepts  treaty  with  Mex- 
ico, 49 

Polk,  Leonidas,  distrusts  Bragg, 
197;  suspended  from  his  com- 
mand, 247 

Pope,  John,  defeated  in  Virginia, 
182 

Prentiss,  Sargent,  beats  Davis  for 
legislature,    38;    eulogizes    Davis, 

45 
Price,  Sterling,  in  Missouri,  156 

Quitman,  John  A.,  opposes  Com- 
promise of  1850,  58;  runs  for 
governor  of  Mississippi,  62 ;  fili- 
busters in  Cuba,  68 

Randolph,  George  Washington,  Sec- 
retary of  War,  174 

Reagan,  John  H.,  Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, 125;  opposes  invasion  of 
North,  225 

Rhett,  Robert  Barnwell,  Calhoun's 
lieutenant,  40;  on  slavery  in  ter- 
ritories, 52 ;  hails  Davis  a  com- 
rade, 55 ;  sketch  of,  56 ;  leader 
in  Nashville  convention,  58;  char- 
acter of,  59;  prevision  of,  87; 
foreign  policy  of,  134 


INDEX 


371 


Richmond,  view  of,  141 ;  at  end  of 
Confederacy,  330 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  influence  of  on 
South,  n 

Seddon,  James  A.,  Secretary  of 
War,  188;  sketch  of,  190;  induces 
Davis  to  send  Johnston  West, 
194;  correspondence  with  John- 
ston, 199-201 ;  seeks  to  reinforce 
West,  221;  sends  aid  to  West, 
245;   resigns,  330 

Seven  Days,  battle  of,  179 

Seven   Pines,  battle   of,   178 

Seward,  William  H.,  leader  in  Sen- 
ate, 84;  defeats  Confederate  di- 
plomacy,  160 

Sharpsburg  (Antietam),  battle  of, 
184 

Sherman,  William  T.,  advances, 
292-294;  sends  message  to  Brown 
and  Stephens,  300;  takes  Atlanta, 
309;  marches  to  sea,  312 

Shiloh,  battle  of,  172 

Slidell,  John,  leader  in  Democratic 
party,  92 ;  sent  as  envoy  to 
France,    I57-I59 

Smith,  Gustavus  W.,  at  council  of 
war,  153 

Smith,  Kirby,  invades  Kentucky, 
183,  185;  does  not  aid  Pember- 
ton,  233 

Soule,  Pierre,  minister  to  Spain,  66, 
67 

Spotsylvania,  battle  of,  285 

Stephens,  Alexander  H.,  leader  in 
Congress,  57 ;  Unionist  leader  in 
Georgia,  102 ;  unfortunate  influ- 
ence of,  105 ;  secures  Confederate 
constitution,  107 ;  elected  Vice 
President,  114;  approached  by 
Sherman,  300;  vagaries  of,  320- 
324;   imprisonment  of,  325 

Taylor,    Zachary,    father-in-law    of 

Davis,    31 ;    reconciled    to    Davis, 

43 ;  elected  President,  54 
Texas,   great    issue   in    politics,    25; 

claims   Rio   Grande   as   boundary, 

40 
Thomas,  G.  H.,  defeats  Hood,  314 


Toombs,  Robert  W.,  absent  from 
Congress  in  crisis,  75 ;  supports 
Buchanan,  83 ;  member  of  Senate 
compromise  committee,  96;  seces- 
sion leader,  102 ;  fails  to  rise  to 
occasion,  105 ;  presidential  candi- 
date, 109;  hears  of  Davis's  elec- 
tion, in;  sketch  of,  112;  .Secre- 
tary of  State,  124;  opposes  firing 
on  Sumter,  139;  criticizes  Davis, 
142 

Trist,  Nicholas,  makes  peace  treaty 
with  Mexico,  49 

Tyler,  John,  part  of  in  acquiring 
Texas,  25 

Utah,   in    Compromise    of    1850,    59 

Vance,    Governor   Zebulon,    opposes 

Davis,   239 
Vicksburg,    campaign    of,    214-216; 

surrender  of,  233-235 

Walker,  Leroy  Pope,  Secretary  of 
War,  123 

Walker,  Robert  J.,  part  of  in  ac- 
quiring Texas,  25,  27;  slanders 
Davis,  38 ;  urges  annexation  of 
Mexico,  47;  aims  of  disappointed, 

49 

Walker,   William,   in   Nicaragua,   68 

Webster,  Daniel,  assists  Compromise 
of  1850,  57 

Wigfall,  Louis  A.,  opposes  Davis, 
187;  Davis's  enemy  in  Congress, 
320 

Wilderness,  battle  of,  285 

Wilmot  Proviso,  launched  in  Con- 
gress, 47;  what  it  was,  48;  North 
holds  to,  57;  abandoned  by 
North,   60 

Yancey,  William  L.,  Calhoun's  lieu- 
tenant, 41 ;  hails  Davis  a  com- 
rade, 55 ;  leader  of  tropic  Nor- 
dics, 56;  leader  in  Nashville  con- 
vention, 58;  withdraws  from 
Charleston  convention,  93;  ab- 
sence of  felt  in  Confederate  con- 
vention, 105;  presidential  candi- 
date, 109;  sent  to  Europe,  123; 
death  of,  238 


